[ Note to the reader: This document is still in a very rough state. Furthermore, in certain spots my information is either missing, incomplete, or just plain wrong. Often, you'll see a linked comment that when "clicked" will bring up an email box, addressed to me. Please comment as necessary. Furthermore, please understand that the overview is necessarily brief, since more detailed discussions will be provided in the individual sections.]
(Insert maps, as appropriate.)
Roughly 92% of the population are Han Chinese (汉族), with the remaining 8% made up of ethnic minorities: Zhuang (壮族), Manchu (满族), Hui (回族), Miao (苗族), Uygur (维吾尔族), Yi (彝族), Tujia (土家族), Mongol (蒙古族), Tibetan (藏族) and other nationalites. [1] (See relevant map.)
The official language is Mandarin (or {\em Putonghua}) 普通话 ) and, with certain exceptions, [2] is the language of instruction in the schools in China. Other important dialects include Cantonese ({\em Yue} 粤), Shanghainese ({\em Hu} 沪), Fuzhou ({\em Minbei} 闽北), Hokkien-Taiwanese ({\em Minnan} 闽南) as well as a variety of Hakka ({\em Kejia} 客家) dialects.
By a 1993 estimate, 7% of the total population aged 15 and over are illiterate, down from 9.3% in 1990. Of the same age group, 22.2% are illiterate or semi-illerate.[3]
While the Compulsory Education Law calls for each child to have nine years of formal schooling, it is recognized that certain realities prevent this nine year standard to be implemented immediately. Therefore, a provision of the Education Law is that China shall be divided into three categories: cities and economically developed areas, towns and villages with medium development, and economically backward areas. In the first two categories, the nine-year standard has, in most cases, become universal. Estimates are that in areas comprising 91% of the population, primary education has become universal. Indeed, by a 1994 estimate, 98.4% of elementary school-aged children entered school, with a dropout rate of less than 2% per year. [4] Of the primary school graduates, over 80% go on to junior middle school,[5] which represents about 75% of the relative age cohort. However, in the ecomonically backward areas, which contains about 25% of China's population, a variable timetable for implementing compulsory education has been tied to each such region's local economic development. In short, the nine-year standard continues to be universalized, but in the strict sense compulsory education in China remains not so much a law as as aspiration.
In passing, it should be noted that the most important contributing factor the the drop-out rates at each level is the increasing cost of education in China. The schools are charged a variety of fees by the local authorities, [6] which are then passed along to the students. One trade union study of primary and middle schools in Chongqing, a very large city in the Sichuan Province, revealed that the average cost of miscellaneous fees for primary students in 1994 was 95.9 yuan; for junior and senior secondary students, the average fees totaled 155.5 yuan and 257.3 yuan, respectively.[7]
The academic year is divided into two semesters, each consisting of 19 weeks, with a total of 38 weeks of instruction for the year. In addition there is one week ``in reserve'' (similar to ``snow days,'' in this country) for additional time as needed. The remaining 13 weeks are for vacations and holidays.
The academic year for junior middle school consists of 39 weeks of instruction, with one week in reserve. The academic year for senior middle school is made up of 40 weeks of instruction, with one to two weeks in reserve.
Students in the vocational and technical secondary education stream will, upon graduation from junior middle school, enter a vocational or technical school. [8] Vocational schools generally offer programs ranging from two to four years, and train medium-level skilled workers, farmers, as well as managerial and technical personnel. Technical schools typically offer four year programs to train intermediate technical personnel. There is a third category, called Schools for Skilled Workers, that typically enroll graduates from junior middle schools to train for positions involving production and operation skills. The length of training is typically three years.
There is also a myriad of higher educational opportunities under the general category of adult education, as below.
The system of grades used in China can either follow a five-scale or a four-scale system, as follows:
Five-Scale System (五级记录):
A (优秀 or 优) Excellent B (良好 or 良) Good C (中等 or 中) Average D (及格 or 及) Satisfactory F (不及格 or 不及) Unsatisfactory (Fail)
Four-Scale System (四级记录):
A (优秀 or 优) Excellent B (良好 or 良) Good C (及格 or 及) Satisfactory D (不及格 or 不及) Unsatisfactory (Fail)
Some transcripts, even those in the original Chinese, use the Latin letter grades (A,B,C,D,F) rather than the Chinese equivalents above. Often, numerical grades are reported (generally on a 0-100 scale); in this case, refer to the bottom of the transcript (especially the English translation) for the letter-grade equivalents.
Certain classes can be taken on a pass-fail basis, and are reported thus:
Pass 通过 Fail 不通过
The management of the Chinese institutions of higher learning is more complicated, and divides into four categories:
[ Maybe we should give an example of such a college or university. What do you think?]
In certain areas, the concept of ``Key School'' has come under fire. Indeed, the success of the Key elementary and middle schools has too often been measured solely in terms of college placement of its students, rather than on more objective measurements of learning. Furthermore, remnants of the same sort of elitism that shut down the key schools during the Cultural Revolution have re-emerged, leading to questioning by the educational authorities.
Apart from the above philosophical reasons, key schools are, for many practical reasons, being turned away from. The first, and most obvious reason is the ever-increasing cost of instruction at a key school. Related to this is the reality that a college education, even at a national key university, is not the unique, or even the best route to gainful employment. The average salary of technical college graduates is starting to rival that of graduates from traditional colleges and universities, resulting in the need to engage in cost-benefit analyses long before one's educational strategy is mapped out. However, different regions continue to adhere to different values in connection with education. In Guangzhou (Canton), where the local ecomony is expanding at a robust rate, entry into technical secondary schools has surpassed entry into key secondary schools in terms of competitiveness. Beijing, on the other hand, continues to be the cultural and intellectual seat of China, and correspondingly the technical school option is still considered an inferior educational stream.
Based on the 1990 census, the total population of China was 1,130,510,000 people, of which 1,039,190,000 were of the Han Nationality (汉族), and the remaining 91,320,000 people were distributed amoung the remaining 55 minority nationalities (少数民族). In the table below, the 1990 population aged six and over is distributed according to the highest level of education received:\footnote{Educational Atlas}
LEVEL Total X 1,1000 Percentage _______________________________________________________ College and University 6,140 0.62 Short-Cycle College 9,620 0.97 _______________________________________________________ Secondary Vocational and Technical School 7,280 1.74 Regular Senior Middle School 72,600 7.30 Junior Middle School 263,390 26.50 _______________________________________________________ Elementary School 420,210 42.27 _______________________________________________________ Illiterate and Semi-Illiterate 204,850 20.61 Total population, Aged 6 and over 994,090 100.00 _______________________________________________________
In the next table are presented 1993 statistics describing entry and graduation numbers for schools at the various levels. Also total enrollments are reported for each level.
LEVEL TOTAL ENTERING TOTAL GRADUATING TOTAL ENROLLMENT
X 1,000 X 1,000 X 1,000
__________________________________________________________________
College and
University 386 299 1,417
Short-Cycle
College 537 272 1,118
__________________________________________________________________
Specialized Secondary
School 899 756 2,820
Secondary Vacational
School 1,349 880 3,064
__________________________________________________________________
Skilled Worker
School 664 500 1,739
Regular Senior
Middle School 2,283 2,317 6,569
__________________________________________________________________
Junior Middle
School 14,789 11,342 40,822
Junior Vocational
School 267 145 562
Junior Middle School
(Special Ed.) 2 1 5
__________________________________________________________________
Elemenatry
School 23,535 18,415 124,212
Elemenatry School
(Special Ed.) 32 11 163
__________________________________________________________________