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Volume 3, Number 6: November 2019 | Article
Education is crucial to children and the future of the society where competitiveness would rise dramatically. It is fundamental and could drive people to successful paths of their lives. China is considered as one of the top global rankings in education over several years, which is impressive. Their rules and reforms brought about positive trend significantly. However, some controversial issues are raised doubting that whether China could produce skilled workers out of their high performance of their education. Moreover, the essay will focus on future growth and reform plans of China education. New trend, online schooling, will be discussed as this sector acquires lots of spendings and is booming.
Regarding Benson (2016), China education experienced an ultimate reform after Chairman Mao era, which led China to be able to penetrate economic modernization. Students are required to study compulsory education for nine years, including primary school (six years) and middle school (three years). Furthermore, high schools are popular among Chinese students where they can prepare themselves for Gaokao; national exams in China that are considered as accomplishment in long-term education and the entrance to college. Gaokao provides tests on core subjects, promoting rote memorization and essential instruction along with critical thinking and suitable applications. Thus, Chinese students are good at taking tests which leads to high performance of international academic tests like PISA. For the level of postsecondary, students’ graduation rates have increased four times within about ten years, which is extraordinary. About 6.3 million students were graduated from university in 2010 and 63% of them were in the workforce (Nolasia, 2016). Despite that a lot of Chinese students are graduated, criticism rises for the tactics of teaching, which is memorizing and preparing tests. People stated that the system fails to encourage innovation and breakthroughs. Moreover, there is a large gap between the knowledge from schools and skills needed to work as China’s economy become more complex. Another point is that barriers of class mobility is a limit for equal education opportunities for Chinese citizens. According to Zhou (2019), The Hukou system is the system that prohibits rural Chinese people the same right and benefits that are enjoyed by urban citizens. This creates disparity among them in which could be a threat to Chinese society in the future.
For future growth indications, skilled labours will be extremely needed as a result of evolution from manufacturing industry to service industry in China. One of the factors that threatens China’s position is that the rising of wages in China allows Vietnam and Cambodia to compete more on lower value of manufacturing. Another factor is that one child policy, aiming to reduce Chinese population, may imply to a decrease in workers in labor force (Nolasia, 2016). Mckinsey study stated that even though China has pools of workers graduated from college, less than 10 percent of job applicants are fitting in foreign companies’ work. These problems indicate that China should refocus from encouraging high scores on tests to concentrating on career aptness. To alleviate issues, Chinese government in 2010 launched a ten-year reform program in order to upgrade China education: they are trying to lessen education’s state control which could promote liberalization attempt. In fact, they are making an effort to reduce rote instruction from the system and enhance national exams. Initially, China has plans for reshaping Gaokao to provide wide range of topics, cognitive proficiency and analytical skills. For the entrance to universities, they require volunteer activities and elective classes participation as well. Apart from the reform, introduction of innovations in teaching and new school model are mentioned. Government schools are adopting Western style in teachings and learning orientation in classes which resemble schools in the U.S (Nolasia, 2016).
Currently, China has a new trend in education which is online schooling. In many cities in the nation, including Beijing and Shanghai, parents invest huge amount of money into their children’s education: Shanghai spend about 80,000 yuan or $11,428 on additional classes such as Chinese calligraphy and physics (Cheng, 2019). These subjects are conducted in small groups or individuals. For math or chemistry, they turn to online courses called Xueersi, which is an online school. In 2030, online tutoring in kindergarten to 12th grade is predicted to grow 23 times to $160 billion, with the help from government budget: they demand that education budgets, of at least 8%, should be in online areas (CNBC, 2019). Although China has been suffering in economic downturn, resulting from US-China trade war, its education is still flourishing due to high demand for online schooling after classes. This incident leads to enormous investment capital. Another reason is that Chinese parents value education of their children and do not hesitate to invest on them when they were forced to cut their spendings during the economic decline. The market valued 251.7 billion yuan or $37 billion USD last year and is predicted to be 380.7 billion yuan in 2020, thanks to this booming online education. Recently, traditional schools are trying to involve more online teachings to keep up with the trend and benefit from this platform. They also see advantages of online schooling: it allows students to have flexible schedules. The contents of these classes are customised to each of them and it would be suitable for each student’s speed of learning (Chan, 2019).
In all, China education has been growing and has shown good performances. Nevertheless, there are some critiques about whether high performance of tests and graduation rates would lead to efficient and readiness workers in workforce or not. Some future implications and promising solutions are elaborated to show that China still has possibilities of growing in this industry. New style of learning, which is online tutoring, has become popular among Chinese parents, investing huge amount on these extracurriculars, despite economic downturn resulted from US-China trade war. Personally, I think China would be better off in this industry since the government’s mandate is supporting digitalization and the demands of online schools are significant. Online schooling could be a great opportunity for rural children to reach equal education level as urban children.
References:
Cheng, E. (2019, September 27). Chinese parents spend big on education and travel. CNBC. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/chinese-parents-spend-big-on-education-and-travel.html?&qsearchterm=education
Benson, B. (2016, n.d.). China’s Education System: Ready For the Future of Its Economy? Nolasia. Retrieved from https://nolasia.net/chinas-education-system-prepare-students/
Zhou, P. (2019, July 3). China’s Hukou System. ThoughtCo. Retrieved from
https://www.thoughtco.com/chinas-hukou-system-1434424
Chan, E. (2019, March 25). China’s private tutoring industry is booming despite economic slowdown. South China Morning Post. Retrieved from
I am totally agree with Chinese improvement in education, however its education got a lot of issues with maintaining the central planning system as well. It might be interesting too see how their government enforcing the control through the online platform which surely its gonna be harder, they shape and control through ban of US’s social network, also create patriotism through the use of educational channels. If China jump into pushing online education platform, idea of people would be harder to control, and its political system should adapted for further development. Also I totally think that its education need to make people think critical, which is the crucial part in making education become more efficient (Although critical thinking could potentially be vulnerable to questioning the system), but since Chinese got advantage so much in terms of population, they have more doctor, they have more engineer and they have more genius and expert in almost every field, hence it is a right direction to enforce education to improve existed labors resources within their country more efficiently.
The problem of education in China is that it focuses more on memorizing and having high scores, which causes the problem of not having enough new graduates that fit the current service market. I think it is good that China has changed its courses on its education system (require activities and analytical skills). However, I think online school is ironic. Since they want more children to do activities outside of school, having online school as an additional class prevents children from doing that. My suggestion for what needs to be done is to change the mindset of the parents. The parents want their children to become successful in school that they oversee what their children need- which is analytical skills and after school activities. Even though some parents have their kids do extracurricular activities such as piano or sports, it’s more because it looks good on the profile. Not what the kids want.
Nevertheless, for China to change its approach to education, is an excellent first step. To solve the problem of the unqualified workforce, it needs to change the mindset of the parents.