Moving ahead, staying behind: Post-2015 educational challenges in China

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

Without a doubt, the 21st century has been characterized by expanded educational opportunities for children in many nations. Overall, this is the case in China where dramatic social and economic reforms associated with increased marketization and globalization have resulted in significant improvements in the lives of rural children. In post-reform China, most rural children enjoy higher living standards, access to nine years of free compulsory education, and opportunity for a better future. In addition to efforts to expand educational access for all students, there have been a number of both governmental and non-governmental initiatives aimed specifically at keeping rural children in schools. Yet as concerns about educational access recede, other challenges to ensuring both quality education and quality of life in China have come into focus. Importantly, the papers presented in this panel highlight how historically disadvantaged children, such poor children, female children, and rural children have largely gained access to schooling over time, significant post-2015 educational challenges remain.
In this panel, panelists use multiple sources of rich qualitative and longitudinal data to investigate significant and persistent educational challenges that remain within a wider context of educational progress in China. In their work, panelists focus on traditional channels of educational success in China, such as via the college entrance examination, but also explore the dimensions of home and school that condition educational success. The first paper examines the relationship between the contemporary gaokao and educational inequality, and in doing so, raises questions about rural school quality and equal preparation for this exam. The paper includes an in-depth look at regional variations in content, policy and access as well as implications of preferential treatment based on residence and ethnicity. The second paper uses longitudinal data from eight Chinese provinces to investigate the linkages between access to early childhood education and educational attainment during a time of dramatic transition in China, 1989-2009. In doing so, the author highlights variation in access to quality preschool education as a significant and increasingly salient contributor to educational stratification in China. In remaining papers, panelists consider the interaction between rural parents and State educational priorities focused on promoting girls’ schooling and all-around development. For example, the third paper examines parental gender attitudes and behaviors over time in one northwestern province, demonstrating not only the direction and degree of changing gender attitudes, but also the impact of holding traditional or progressive gender attitudes on children’s educational attainment. The final paper uses qualitative data gathered in Shanxi province to understand how rural parents conceptualize the relationship between their children’s well-rounded development and their schooling experiences.
In addition, the panel addresses the extent to which international and national educational policy priorities have benefited disadvantaged groups, such as girls and the rural poor, and in doing so the panelists raise critical questions regarding educational and social mobility in 21st century China

Taken together, these papers tell a story of dramatic educational progress in China, but also highlight the significant challenges that remain. Findings from each of the papers suggest that despite government efforts to improve the quality of rural education, rural children remain disadvantaged by factors in the home, such as rural parents’ attitudes and knowledge about education reforms as well as by institutional factors related to unequal preparation not only for the college entrance examination but also in school readiness for primary school. The findings from each of these papers spotlight the educational challenges that remain in post-2015 China.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Jennifer Adams, Drexel University

Individual Presentations

• Getting Ahead and Getting Behind: Inequality and the Gaokao in Contemporary China - Tanja Carmel Sargent, Rutgers University

• Early Childhood Education and Educational Attainment in China, 1989-2009 - Jennifer Adams, Drexel University

• Examining changing rural family educational attitudes and children’s attainment - Yuping Zhang, Lehigh University

• Preparing well-rounded youth: the role of rural parents - Peggy Kong, Lehigh University