The way to early childhood education equity - policies to tackle the urban-rural disparities in China

Abstract

Protecting children's development rights and promoting social equity are the priority and core tasks of the Chinese government and international community. Currently, the inequity of early childhood education (ECE) in China is still severe. The disparities between urban and rural areas are the main contributors to this situation, which are manifested in ECE opportunities, process, and outcome. This research tries to address the inequity issue and evaluate the policies the Chinese government has taken to tackle the inequity. With a policy analysis approach, the research analyzed the official data, documents, policy papers, and laws in order to construct a clear picture of Chinese ECE disparities and the achievement and challenges of the relevant ECE policies. In this article, the background of the urban and rural ECE disparities will be first introduced, followed by the detailed analysis of the disparities in ECE opportunities, process, and outcome. Then the article will describe and analyze the official measures and policies that are employed to tackle the ECE disparities, including the institutional foundations for rural ECE development, optimized allocation of ECE resources, improved rural kindergarten teachers' qualification system, enhanced ECE funding system, and strengthened supervision and evaluation system. The article will also evaluate the effectiveness of the policies and give the implications that can help the further ECE policy-making process.

Efficiency Evaluation and Influencing Factors Analysis of Governmental Expenditure on Preschool Education

“…Meanwhile, for the sake of finding out the different impacts of preschool education policies on the eastern, western and central regions, it would be used in the model for the interaction term of the dummy variable including the preschool education policies and t the 3 regions as well. On the basis of the history of the development of preschool education, the article indicated that policy would also be a significant factor influencing the preschool education spending efficiency (Hong, Liu, Ma, & Luo, 2015). As a result, the effects of two policy variables, fiscal decentralization and preschool education policy, would be found out in the model.…”

Chinese teachers’ perceptions of early childhood school readiness

“…This places these children at an educational disadvantage relative to those children who can attend preschool (Hu, Zhou, Chen, & Winsler, 2017). This inequity is more severe in rural areas where the number of preschools remains small and many children do not have access to preschools (Hong, Liu, Ma, & Luo, 2015; Zhu & Zhang, 2008). In 2010, the State Council of China announced a plan for supporting early childhood education (as cited in Ministry of Education in China, 2014).…”

Quality of the ECEC Workforce in Romania: Empirical Evidence from Parents’ Experiences

“…Between 2014 and 2015, 81.8% of rural children aged 3-5/6 years were enrolled in pre-school education compared to 97.7% in urban areas [42]. Living in smaller communities, rural parents tend to develop their own values, customs, traditions, and opinions with regard to education [43] based on their socioeconomic status, educational level, access to less educational resources, more difficult child care arrangements, fewer jobs, and lower financial resources [37,44,45]. Being less educated and having lower expectations, the respondents from rural localities tend to have better opinions and to express a much greater level of satisfaction regarding all types of staff involved in child care and education services.…”

“…In terms of support and guidance, parents from urban areas considered there to be room for improvement (see Table 7). While the child-adult ratio is one dimension for the overall quality of the ECEC services, other studies have shown that this indicator is correlated with measures applied to assess quality, including higher-quality interactions between the child and the caregiver [45]. The results described in this section reveal that parents from Bucharest-Ilfov region recorded the lowest positive valuing for the statements: 'Offers support and guidance in education of the child' (45.1%), and 'Listen and consider the suggestions concerning the education of my child' (48.4%).…”