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Since the 1980s, China has achieved tremendous success and established herself as the second largest power in the world economy. However, when the country is advancing at the full speed towards modernization, diverse problems in education were caused by the unbalanced distribution of economic, social and educational resources.
Taking the basic education sector for example, government financial input, student enrollment and teacher quantity and quality help to create a big gap between rural and urban schools and accordingly hamper education equity. It is evidenced in public financial budget report in 2015 (see Figure 1.1).
As illustrated in the figure, the amount of average funds from government investment for students in schools (ranging from primary school to university) is quite different between the first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and cities in western regions like Yunnan and Guizhou.
Figure 1.1 Average funds in the public budget for students in 2015 (Data retrieved from www.eol.cn)
Statistics also reveal that about 40% of the rural school-age population don’t participate in the College Entrance Examination (MOE, 2015) because of the poor quality of high school education in rural areas. More serious problem lies in the enrollment in higher education. The gross enrollment ratio of Beijing higher education for local students is 49%, while only 8.64% in Yunnan province. In addition, the enrollment number of rural students for top universities is decreasing year on year(Meng & Mai, 2007).
The quality and quantity of teachers have been another noteworthy problem.In Zhou and Xiong’s (2017) report, the ratio of teachers with associate’s degrees or above is 78.01% in Chinese urban primary schools, 31% higher than in rural areas; the ratio of that in urban secondary schools is 62.44%, 38% higher than rural areas (p.2).Additionally, geographic distance, limited resources and lack of professional support make the ef orts in improving teacher quality a challenging job. Moreover, in spite of relatively lower teacher quality, many rural schools suffer from a serious shortage of teachers. It is a common scenario to see a rural teacher stand in different classrooms teaching multiple subjects. In many rural schools, especially in primary schools, there are a considerable number of post-transfer teachers ( zhuan gang jiao shi ) [ 转岗教师 ](teachers who are not the major in some school subjects are transferred to teach that subject. For instance, the school accountant may teach music or math). Li (2012) found that post-transfer English teachers accounted for 57% of all the English teachers in Liaocheng city in Shandong province; and the study of You (2016) showed that the post-transfer English teachers still account for 32.5% of the whole group of primary school English teachers of Heyuan city in Guangdong province.