Research and Strategy of Educational Equity in the Context of the Harmonious Society

Автор: Fengwu Zhang, Jin Tao

Журнал: International Journal of Education and Management Engineering(IJEME) @ijeme

Статья в выпуске: 1 vol.3, 2013 года.

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Educational equity is not only an important foundation of social justice, but also an important content of building a harmonious socialist society. At present, China's educational inequality has become the focus of the community. The research on the problem of educational equity has become an important topic in the context of a harmonious society. In the background of building a harmonious society, this paper proposes measures and countermeasures taken by two main objects to promote the educational equity. Finally, the article proposes some ideas to solve educational equity in the future.

Harmonious society, educational equity, socialist

Короткий адрес: https://sciup.org/15013800

IDR: 15013800

Текст научной статьи Research and Strategy of Educational Equity in the Context of the Harmonious Society

  • 1 .the importance of educational equity in the context of a harmonious society

  • 2 .Strategies on alleviating the problem of educational inequality

Harmonious society is a social state of mutual integration of the social relationships and various elements. Its performance is to stimulate social vitality and to realize social equity and justice. The rich implication of harmonious society includes multiple relationships of people and people, people and society, people and nature, covering all areas of people's lives. Educational equity is one of the educational resources and educational opportunities for the supply of knowledge and value judgments, which includes education, equal rights and equal opportunity. The core is equal access to education, educational equal rights is the reflection of political equality and economic equality in education. Educational equity is an important part of social equity, injustice is the largest of any educational groups most far-reaching discrimination and social injustice, and ultimately affect the overall stability and sustainable development.

Since the proposed building a harmonious society in China, the party and state leaders have made a lot of discussion on the issues of education, educational equity will be considered as an important direction of development. In the national education conference held by the CPC Central Committee in July 14, 2010, the

General Secretary Hu Jintao explicitly proposed to promote equity as the national basic education policy, Premier Wen Jiabao also pointed out that fairness in education is an important foundation for social justice, the most fundamental and most important fair, and the "greatest tool” to achieve social justice. Equity in education

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has become the focal point of Chinese society, relating to the masses of the nation's most vital interests, the economic and social development of countries and regions, the reflection of popular support. Therefore, educational equity has become an important topic in the context of a harmonious society.

  • A.    The concept of education equity compatible with the harmonious society

  • 1)    A fundamental value based on the development of educational equity

Educational equity is the value of social equity in education extension and embodiment. The main contents of educational equity are: all enjoy equal right to education in law; everyone enjoys equal access to public educational resources in the field of educational policy; everyone has equal treatment in educational activities, all have the same academic success and employment opportunities for the future [1]. Combined with China's specific conditions, equal educational opportunities, equal educational conditions and environment are compulsory for every school-age children, to strive to equity and narrow the gap. In the non-compulsory, as the scarcity of educational resources, it’s difficult to meet the needs of each member. So according to social division of labor and requirements of the talent, a fair competition mechanism should be established to make the identification and selection of pupils so that each person with talent and ambition, have equal access to promotion opportunities for the elite. Educational equity is the cornerstone of social justice and the meaning of building socialist harmonious society. Educational equity should be a fundamental value of education for the development of a harmonious socialist society.

  • 2)    Educational equity as the basis for the Government to formulate educational policies

Government is the public service provider and public interest defender, maintaining fairness in education is an important responsibility of government. All levels of government in the exercise of public power should be in accordance with the inherent requirements of a socialist harmonious society, firmly set the thought of educational equity, connect the equity with the goal of building a socialist harmonious society closer together, take a firm grasp of education with a high sense of responsibility, narrow the "wealth gap" in the field of education. As a key scale, educational equity is used to test the government administration. According to social development levels and characteristics of various stages of education, the educational policies are made by the government with their own bias, while educational equity should always be the starting point and end point to develop the educational policy.

  • 3)    Establish a fair idea of public education

Understanding of the concept of educational equity largely affects people in a realistic choice, but also affects the government’s specific behavior in the educational activities. The concept of existing educational equity affected by the distorted concept of value has become the shackles in the new era [2]. Educational equity is a social, historical, relative concept, with no absolute equity existed. Educational equity is not the pursuit of egalitarianism, but acceptance of appropriate and good education on the basis of social members’ talents. As a fair idea of public education established, social members could reasonably exercise the right to education and actively carry out educational duties in educational activities, consciously resist the injustice of education to maintain and promote educational equity. With the accelerated process of globalization and updated science and technology, our country has entered a learning society, lifelong education increasingly play its role in the educational equity compensation. As Charles • Hummel said: "from the perspective of lifelong education, the discussion of equality of opportunities should not be confined to the school education sector. Out of school education, adult education, recurrent education and all these different forms of education have an important supplement to compensate for other roles." Advocating the concept of lifelong learning and lifelong education in the public, different educational needs are met to promote educational equity.

  • B.    Improve the policy guidance of Educational Equity

As the embodiment of national will, policies play an important role in the educational development, which provides an important means to adjust and balance the interests of all social levels, to develop management education.

  • 1)    Optimize government investment in education

Increase investment in education without delay. China's large population and relatively scarce resource conditions so that expenditure on education is too small, detailed in Table 1.

table i. 2000-2009 The proportion table of state education budget

Year

State education budget ( Ten thousand Yuan )

Budget expenditure on education

( Ten thousand Yuan )

GDP ( Hundr ed million Yuan )

The proportion of

State education budget occupies GDP ( % )

The proportion of Budget expenditure on education occupies GDP ( % )

2000

25626056

20856792

99215

2.58

2.1

2001

30570100

25823762

109655

2.79

2.36

2002

34914048

31142383

120333

2.9

2.59

2003

38506237

34538583

135823

2.84

2.54

2004

44658575

40278158

159878

2.79

2.52

2005

51610759

46656939

183217

2.82

2.55

2006

63483648

57956138

211924

3

2.73

2007

82802142

76549082

249530

3.32

3.07

2008

104496296

96855602

300670

3.48

3.22

2009

103624077

-

335353

3.09

Compared with the average accounts for 5% of GDP made by the rest of the world total amount of investment in education, China's educational investment is gradually improving. There is still a great gap between China and developed countries. Serious shortage of investment in education has greatly hindered the development, impeding the historical process of equitable education. Continuously increase educational funding to speed up the development of education, improve the national education level, relieve the increasingly prominent differentiation pattern of different levels of urban and rural schools and change the educational inequality caused by the shortage of resources.

  • 2)    The implementation of the interest compensation mechanism

The concept of "Efficiency first" development, relatively neglect the education equity. Various names of "market oriented" reform largely undermine the public education, public welfare and fairness, increasing the gap between urban and rural basic education, regional disparities and class disparities [3]. In the current development model of elitism, educational resources prior to urban and the strong trend social stratum incline, the rural and poor areas that need more support are increasingly marginalized. Therefore, such polarization as “improving on perfection” and “having one misfortune after another” are caused between the city and countryside, developed areas and less developed regions. Besides the relevant measures implemented by the state and government to reduce this inequality, the policy of interest compensation should be directly used to compensate the inferior social class and the inferior community, so that the education levels achieve a relatively flat state. The inclination of educational policy to vulnerable groups could promote friendly relations between social members and social group, stimulate social vigor and promote social equity and justice.

  • 3)    Encourage and support the development of private education

Private education is an effective way to solve the conflicts between current shortage of educational resources and the growth of educational needs. Depending on tuition fees, social contributions and other forms of education, private schools make the best use of educational resources to alleviate the state of shortage of educational resources and to expand access to education. Flexible school mechanism could be used to adapt to the requirements of market economy and personnel training, improve the structure of education, enrich teaching methods, improve school efficiency and meet the diverse educational needs.

  • C.    Strengthen legal protection for Educational Equity

With the further development of domestic education and social facilities in the mature operating conditions, the law coercive power to ensure the implementation of educational equity on the basis of full awareness of reality and the public needs of education, reflecting the right system to the general expectation of the harmonious development of society and institutions structure. The legalization of educational equity protection indicates that China has begun to establish a more independent and perfect allocation system of education resources. The equitable distribution of educational resources is no longer a constraint on the macro, but a document with details of the allocation criteria and legal authority, to enable the educational equity the reality standards and the effectiveness. The legal protection of educational equity embodied in three aspects as education legislation, law enforcement and legal remedies.

  • D.    Optimizing the environment of educational equity

Education Fair is a historical concept, and it is a process of development, the extent and scope of education must achieve by a certain environment. The reality of Education Fair is the result of all the various environmental factors work together, the environment quality have a major impact on the degree that Education Fair achieve.

  • 1)    Fair competitive environment for educational recruitment

Enrollment system has significant impact on the degree that opportunities for educational equity to achieve. Enrollment in primary and secondary schools should be based on the balanced development of compulsory enrollment by region, and forbidding cross-school choice. High school and university education system should take the competitive system. Examination has long been proved an effective mechanism for talent selection. "Fair competition" is the soul of the examination system, "fair, open and justice" is the core concept of the examination system. A fair competitive examination environment should be created to protect the candidates’ equal rights and equal opportunities. The quality of the examination environment is directly related to the authority fairness and seriousness of the national education examinations.

  • 2)    Democratic and equal teaching environment in class

The classroom is the main place for students to get knowledge, and creating a good classroom environment is an important condition to improve the quality of teaching and optimize classroom teaching. Classroom teaching environment refers to both the physical classroom environment, and the psychological environment and emotional environment that teachers and students create in the classroom together, which includes the teaching attitude of teachers in the teaching process and the teacher-student relationship which is established in the teaching activities. The justice of teachers could make students to learn the quality of fair, honest, justice, conform to norms. Only did the fair and reasonable treatment and evaluation to students, can win the students’ trust, effective organization of teaching, and improving teaching quality, to create an equal and fair learning environment.

  • 3)    Scientific and standardized organizational management of environment

Education is a manager with the inner thoughts, and management is to educate people with external constraints. Optimizing the organizational management environment of the school is to play its positive implicit on cultural and educational functions. The scientific and standardized organizational management of environment of the school matter whether the students could have a healthy growth and educational equity could implement effectively.

  • 4)    Maintain and realize the equal and justice social environment

  • 3 .Discussion on solving the unfair education question in non-compulsory education stage

Education and economic society promote each other and complement one another. Educational development effects the economic society development, promote economic society leap. Economic society development promotes the development of education and to propose new development requirements to the education. The relationship between Education and economic society determines and requires a national and regional must create the coordinated external environment. Education is the most powerful tool to realize the social justice, but at the same time realizing the social education also take the fair and justice social environment as the protection. Only then realizes the social justice to be just truly, can safeguard people educational right and the entire society's stable order. Looking from the country, first is to strengthen the socialism outlook for honor and dishonor education to the educational fields official, to make them distinguish clearly between right and wrong, the distinguishable honor or disgrace, and maintain the education fair by themselves; and increase the degree on punishment of corruption in educational fields to make education has the health, the accord development in the government by law track [4].

The present non-compulsory education stage and the focus that the current citizen pay attention to is always in the higher education stage in our country, therefore this part of discussion carry on taking the higher education as the main body. Higher education charge's implementation, promoted the education to be fair to a certain extent. But along with the school expense unceasing enhancement, suppressed the education to be fair to a certain extent. Therefore, it should be taken the corresponding measure to carry on the compensation to the minority groups, this is also education fair itself should have the meaning.

  • A.    Determine higher education school expense reasonably

  • 1)    Carry on the cost accounting strictly

    The school expense increase year by year since 1997 the higher education start strictly practicing the charge system officially. What the basis of his kind of charge grows, and the present charging criterion and growth proportion to be whether reasonable, which involves to the charging criterion calculation question. The country should make the charge measure that is suitable for our country current situation to avoid “unreasonable expense” in education.

  • 2)    Definite scientific and reasonable charge proportion

In term of the Public university, the school expense are not the entire train cost, that is to say the fees that students pay are not the entire expense the education need, some part is undertaken by the country. According to statistic that the World Bank accounts to 33 countries, school expense in public higher education take the proportion in 10%-20%. At present the world average level is about 15%. Therefore, in the current situation that majority of residents’ salaries are not so high, school expenses are not suitable to enhance too quickly, it is should consider the overall economic development condition, the resident real income condition, and the Engel's coefficient condition, the proportion should be controlled in the reasonable scope in resident actually paying capacity and the psychological bearing capacity.

  • B.    Adopt kinds of measures, reduce the school pressures

  • 1)    The government should undertake the responsibility

Seen from the front chart, the proportion of educational input from the government occupied is relatively lower, there are some objective factors to raise the school expense standard as the main way to solve insufficient funds in university, but the charge cannot replace the essential investment that all levels of the government to handle the public high schools. It should enhance the financial investment that the government pay to higher schools, which causes the higher education department complete the national raising function and duty, while also can enjoy the adjustment that the market rule own. And it not only shout the offer, do educational business at a loss. The education is the schools’, also the countries’.

  • 2)    Explore the new raising fund policy positively

  • 4 .Thought on alleviating the ways of unfair education

    It is thought that the country should creatively attempt the new balanced methods in the foundation of adopting the nimble and diverse charge forms (current charge forms are mainly divided into three kinds of realtime tariff, prepay school expense system and detention payment, which according to the time relationship between cost compensation and teaching activity ), the higher education in our country undergoes swiftly development in recent years, specially since 1999 increased enrollment, the students’ quantity surpass greatly the early-1990s, although at present the students’ quantity faces the decrease tendency, and the overall number is still very large, therefore the educational market still come into demand. But at present that some student who get lower score go into universities through the multiform matriculation already becomes one of certain sources of income in university, but on the other hand, the phenomenon that the students who have so high score but impoverished that lost opportunities of study also cause the author's interest, from now on whether two advantageous unions to form supplementary, “by the scholarship and self-cultivation study” perhaps alleviate the negative influence that unfair education brings.

  • 5 .conclusions

The fund shortage has become the bottleneck of our country’s development, we should learn the development model and the experience from those whose economy develop quite successfully, and adopt the industrial production operational mechanism, raises the educational expenditure, utilize the market method to solve educational finance short question creatively. So long as it is advantageous in agglomerating the more educational finances, is advantageous in the liberation of education productive forces, is advantageous in maximum limit satisfying the broad masses to accept the more and the better education, under the premise to abide by the laws of education, we may use all forms and the methods, call out the social investing and contributing strength which assist students, further advances the share system of educational cost.

Promoting educational equity is a basic, overall, strategic task, but also our unwavering goal of educational reform and development, in the process of building a socialist harmonious society under the leadership of our Party. The research and study on educational equity is in the initial phase. Whether countries or regions should carefully study the reform of educational equity, and promote the sound development of a harmonious society.

Список литературы Research and Strategy of Educational Equity in the Context of the Harmonious Society

  • Zhongying Shi,“Main Connotation and Social Significance of Education Fair”,Beijing: Journal of Chinese Society of Education,2008.3. (in chinese)
  • Fangfang Peng, “Research of Solutions to Equity in Education in Harmonious Society”[D],Jiangxi:Jiangxi Normal University.2007. (in chinese)
  • Dongping Yang, “From Equality of Right to Equality of Opportunity: the Slot of Educational Equity in New China”,Beijing:Pdking University Education Review,2006.4.2. (in chinese)
  • Qingjun Si,“Social Justice Question Research in Socialism Harmonious Society”[D], Suzhou:Suzhou University,2008.(in chinese).
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