Understanding the 15-Year Free Education Policies in China: An Online Study of Four Cases

Abstract

Many counties in Western China have launched 15-year ‘free’ education policies since 2010 to provide the 3-year free early childhood education (ece). To understand the affordability, accessibility, accountability, and sustainability of these policies, we sampled the four counties in Shanxi and Shaanxi province that were the first cohort to implement free ece policies: Yulin, Ningshan, Zuoyun, and Changzhi. A multiple-case online research was conducted and the results indicated that: (1) the ‘free’ education policies are neither ‘all kids free’ nor ‘all fees free’, thus could only partially solve the problem of affordability; (2) the policies did not solve the problems related to school place allocation, which in turn, tended to exacerbate the issue of accessibility and inequality in educational opportunities; (3) no monitoring and quality assurance mechanisms were launched to improve the accountability of kindergartens; and (4) the policies are unlikely to be sustainable as the ece budget entirely relies on the fiscal investment at the county level. Implications of these findings were discussed and some suggestions were made.

Understanding the 15-Year Free Education Policies in China: An Online Study of Four Cases

In the past 30 years, education has increasingly become a more prominent feature in every reform in China. Most recently, an urgent emphasis on early childhood education (ece) has dominated the sound bites in nationwide debates. In 2010, the State Council of China government published the National Program for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development (2010-2020) (referred to as Educational Program below). According, governments at all levels have significantly increased the input in ece. Counties in Shaanxi Province, like Shenmu County and Fugu County (both belong to Yulin City), took the lead in implementing the 15-year free education policy (namely, 9-year compulsory education plus 3-year high school education and 3-year early childhood education), followed by provinces like Shanxi, Shandong and Guangxi. Is it another “Great Leap Forwar d” or a real breakthrough in education policies? Albeit all the promises and applauses, this 15-year free education policy has triggered controversies both in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Li, for instance, argued whether this policy is implementable in Hong Kong as critical problems could not be solved and the implementation will cause affordability-quality and affordability-accountability trade-offs. 1 There are also other concerns about its impact on the quality and inequality, as well as accessibility and sustainability in educational development. Hence against this background, this study will provide timely and empirical analyses of four chosen cases in Western China to understand the impacts of the new policies on the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of ece, 2 and the sustainability of the policy.

The 3A1S Framework for Evaluating ece Policies

We proposed a theoretical framework of 3A’s to evaluate ece policies in three dimensions: 3 Accessibility, Affordability and Accountability. We tend to believe that a truly scientific and appropriate free ece policy should also meet the following requirements: (1) Accessibility: every preschool-age child can easily attend the nearby kindergarten; (2) Affordability: every family can easily afford the fees of the chosen kindergarten, and some exemptions could be offered to the needy families; (3) Accountability: for every kindergarten, be it public or private, the extra fiscal input provided by the policy should be accountable to the government for improving education quality. In addition, implementing the 15-year free education policy requires strong financial support. All governments have to well-calculate the sustainability of its new free education policy. Otherwise, the fiscal deficit will make the policy impossible to sustain. Therefore, in this study, we will try to evaluate the free ece policies with this 3A1S framework: accessibility, affordability, accountability, and sustainability.

The 3A’s Problems in China ece

Since the 1990s, the responsibility of funding and managing ece has shifted to the private sector or the non-governmental organizations (ngos). This shift has changed ece from planned financing (by the Central Government) to self-financing regulated by the market. In 2005, for example, the budget for ece was drastically cut to zero in the annual budget plan of the Central Government. 4 This paradigm shift has unfortunately caused an overall decline in the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of ece in China. 5

Accessibility. In China, the kindergarten enrollment rate has actually been decreasing due to the increased closures of kindergartens since 2000. It was reported that 45% of children between the ages of 3 and 6 (or about 23 million children) were enrolled in 180,000 early childhood settings in the year of 2000. 6 This means that 55% of young children would have to stay at home, even though their parents were willing to pay for their kindergarten education. This huge shortage of kindergarten places has made the accessibility of ece a real challenge, or even an impossible mission, in China. In addition, the growing urban-rural gap in access to kindergarten in China has further worsened this problem. 7

Affordability. Since the government adopted a market-driven model for ece funding that largely relies on tuition fees, higher quality programs have been increasing their tuition fees. Today in China, tuition fees of kindergartens are higher than that of universities. Kindergartens in Shenzhen are more expensive than those in Hong Kong. 8 As a result, low-income families can only access low quality and low cost programs. This trend poses severe hardship for rural and poor urban families. 9

Accountability. The quality rating systems launched in urban areas in China do not seem to work well. 10 The more important, but harder to measure, “process” indicators such as relationships and pedagogy, were often neglected. Even in Beijing, the Kindergarten Quality Rating System (kqrs) failed to gauge the quality of various kindergartens. A culturally appropriate quality assurance rating system is needed in China 11 and the “3A1S” theory has emerged in time to meet this need.

This project examines the impacts of these 15-year free education polices on the accessibility, affordability, accountability, and sustainability of early childhood education. We chose and planned to conduct field studies in the four counties from the first cohort of implementing these policies in China. However, we failed to get the approval from the educational authorities of the four counties via all the possible channels and connections. The major reason frequently cited by the local educational authorities is that we are researchers from Hong Kong and have to apply for special approval from the foreign affairs section of local governments. That said, we had to resort to innovative and alternative research methods, such as online case study, for data collection. Online research method allows us to carry out research within politically sensitive areas, as it can protect researchers and participants through anonymity and physical distance. 12 This approach is appropriate for this study as all the policy documents have to be released online, according to the new policy which stipulates that all government affairs be transparent in China. Therefore, in the present study, all the official documents about the free ece policies imposed in the four counties were collected and analyzed to examine its accessibility, affordability, accountability and sustainability so as to provide scientific support for the education policy-making in China. The analyses were guided by the following research questions:

1. Is early childhood education literally free? If not, what kinds of school fees are waived?

2. Is it really free to all the young children in the county? If not, who are eligible to receive the free kindergarten education?

3. Has the policy improved or reduced the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of ece?

4. Is the free education policy sustainable in the long run? Why or why not?

Method

Online research and document analysis methods were employed to conduct a multiple case study of four counties in Western China.

Online Research Method

Researchers in the Web 3.0 era cannot ignore considering the electronic communication as a research resource and tool. 13 This is particularly true when some sensitive researchers are concerned with understanding different aspects of collective human behaviors. Online research has many advantages over the conventional research methods, as it can reach a large number of people across different geographical and socio-cultural boundaries. 14 The most powerful advantages of online research include reduced cost, democratization of communication, elimination of discrimination against the disabled and the minorities, as well as elimination of the traditional biases that occur with face-to-face research methods. 15 More importantly, online research provides possibilities to research on people situated in areas with restricted access or those who may not be easily accessed in face-to-face research methods. 16 In particular, online research makes it possible for researchers to carry out research within politically sensitive areas, as we found in this study. Due to anonymity and physical distance, both the researchers and the research participants are protected and opinions which are considered politically incorrect could be easily said and heard. However, maintaining professionalism and assuring clarity of the intended meanings may be more difficult in an online research setting than in a face-to-face one. This might be one of the limitations in conducting online research.

Therefore, in this study we collected all the data on the Internet through searching for Chinese news reports about China’s 15-year free education. The keywords “China+15-year free education” (in simplified Chinese) were used for the search on Google Hong Kong www.google.com.hk) on February 18, 2013. The key parameters for this Google search were set as: (1) Language: all the Chinese websites. (2) Target: government websites at all levels. (3) Time: the last one month. (4) Rank: the order of relevance. (5) Keywords: China+15-year free education. We analyzed the top-100 news web pages and their relevant links, and removed the irrelevant and repeated information. The repeated reports were deleted with reference to their original sources, and the different reports on the same case were prioritized according to the following sequence: government websites, people.com, sina.com, and news networks of local governments. Personal web pages and blogs were also removed from the list. In total, we found 12 counties implementing the 15-year free education policy. Of which, seven were in Shaanxi, three in Shanxi, one in Shandong, and one in Xinjiang. The four counties we chose for this online case study, namely, Yulin, Ningshan, Zuoyun, and Changzhi, were the first cohort to implement 15-year free education policy in China.

Document Analysis Method

Document analysis method was employed to analyze the four cases chosen. In the present study, we obtained all the official documents, reports and publications about the 15-year free education policy from the government websites and government databases of the four counties. These official documents were cross-checked with other online information such as news, teacher’s blogs and posts, and university scholars to ensure their authenticity and comprehensiveness. Guided by the four aforementioned research questions, content analysis was conducted to produce semi-quantitative results (see Tables 1-2). Further clarification was sought from the local ece scholars, or experienced educators whenever confusion or misconception in analyzing the official documents arose.

Results

The four chosen cases were analyzed with a focus on the basic background of the county/city, the free education policy, and the fiscal investment mechanism. The affordability, accessibility, accountability, and sustainability of the policies were also analyzed and the summaries were presented in Table 1 and Table 2.

Case One: Yulin City, Shaanxi

The City. Situated at the northernmost part of Shaanxi Province, Yulin City is honored as “China’s Kuwait” for its abundant energy and mineral resources like coal, oil, gas, and salt. Its gdp is only second to Xi’an, the capital city of Shaanxi province. Shenfu coal field is one of the top seven in the world, and also the major engine for Yulin’s dramatic economic development. In 2012, the whole city’s gdp reached rmb 270.7 billion, and the government revenue totaled rmb 66.6 billion, to which the local fiscal revenue contributed rmb 22 billion. The per capita disposable income of urban residents was rmb 23,705 and the per capita net income of rural residents was rmb 7,510. 17 Yulin has one district and eleven counties. Shenmu County was the first to see its gdp rising to over rmb 100 billion in the five northwestern provinces (Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang), and it also pioneered the 15-year free education across the county. Since the new semester of 2013, the policy has been implemented in all the 12 districts and counties of Yulin. 18

The Free Education Policy. According to the free education policy, all the districts and counties of Yulin City implemented the 15-year free education policy in 2013. All the fees incurred for the 9-year compulsory education and the tuition fee for the 3-year high school education are exempted while other types of fees are still charged. Likewise, all the public kindergartens will no longer charge tuition fee, but other fees are still in place. Private kindergartens are partially subsidized by the government and the balance are paid by the parents concerned. 19 The educational authorities of Shaanxi province classify local kindergartens into 3 levels according to their school conditions (the first, second, and the third class). The partial subsidy for private kindergartens is rmb 450 for each student per semester or rmb 900 per school year, which is the standardized tuition fee for first class kindergartens (the highest, indeed). As private kindergartens normally charge much more than this standardized tuition fee, the parents of private kindergartens will therefore have to pay for part of the tuition. In other words, this free education policy, per se, is neither ‘all fees free’ nor ‘all kids free’, and hence could only partially solve the problem of affordability. 20

The Fiscal Investment Mechanism. The ‘additional money’ needed for the 15-year free education policy is jointly injected by the municipal government and each county government, but the proportion assigned to each district and county varies widely according to their economy and gdp. 21 The wealthy counties, such as Shenmu, Fugu, Jingbian, and Dingbian, will take all the financial responsibility. For instance, Hengshan County provides 60% of the funding from 2013 to 2015 with the rest subsidized by the municipal finance. Yulin district has the financial burden evenly shared by the city and the district. As for the poor counties, like Suide, Mizhi, Jiaxian, Wubao, Qingjian, and Zizhou, all the funds needed are allocated by the municipal finance. 22

Case Two: Ningshan County, Shaanxi

The County. Ningshan County is situated at the south of Shaanxi Province with a population of 74,000. It is a ‘Key Poverty-stricken County’ to be aided by the State. In 2010, for instance, its fiscal revenue was only rmb 30.75 million, and the per capita net income of rural residents was rmb 3,812. The county has 27 kindergartens, primary and middle schools with 878 teachers and about 8000 students in total. There are only 7 public kindergartens in the county, and three new ‘standardized’ kindergartens are being built. It was reported that the county government purchased the land from real estate developers to build these new kindergartens. 23

The Free Education Policy. The Implementation Policy of Free 3-year Early Childhood Education was issued by the government of Ningshan County in 2011. Since then, all the public kindergartens have waived the tuition fee, while all the private kindergartens are partially subsidized by the government with reference to the standardized tuition fee of the first class kindergartens. 24 According to the Bureau of Commodity Prices, this standardized tuition fee is rmb 90 per child per month (rmb 900 per year). In addition, all the kindergarteners are entitled to receive a living allowance of rmb 3 every day (rmb 750 per school year). As a result, Ningshan County has achieved 100% coverage of nutritional improvement and 3-year free ece. In the 2011-2012 school year, 1,400 children benefited from this policy, which contributed to a successful injection of rmb 2.4 million in total to reduce the financial burden of local families. The 3-year kindergarten enrollment rate of that school year rose accordingly from 93.4% to 95.5% (K3), from 84.1% to 90.4% (K2), and from 74.6% to 83.3% (K1). 25

The Fiscal Investment Mechanism. Children enroll at kindergartens with their household registration cards (Hukou). All public kindergartens must submit the list of registered children who meet the conditions for free education and the copies of their household registers to the Bureau of Education within 5 working days after the registration, and all the materials must be archived. The Bureau of Education and the Bureau of Finance will then jointly finalize the list after verifying all the information. Finally, the Bureau of Finance will allocate the funds directly to the relevant kindergartens. Any registered child in private kindergartens who meets the conditions is also eligible for free pre-school education. With the same mechanism that public kindergartens undergo, the funds will be deposited to the bank accounts of the relevant private kindergartens by the Bureau of Finance. 26

Case Three: Zuoyun County, Shanxi Province

The County. Situated near the northwestern border of Shanxi Province, Zuoyun County has 3 towns and 6 townships with a population of 148,000. And this county features high-quality coals and its pillar industry is coal production. The estimated coal reserve is about 10 billion tons and the annual production is 13.5 million tons. 27

The Free Education Policy. The free education policy was launched in the spring semester of 2012. All the registered public kindergarteners are eligible for free ece, whereas all the registered private kindergarteners could receive a limited subsidy to cover the expenses for tuition, health-care, and teaching materials. The total fee exemption for each public kindergartener is rmb 1,485 per year. For those whose kindergarten is affiliated to a primary school, they can reimburse rmb 742 per year. Moreover, registered private kindergarteners can receive a subsidy of rmb 508 per head per year, which covers the tuition fee, health-care fee, and teaching materials fee. 28

The Fiscal Investment Mechanism. It shares the same fiscal investment mechanism with Ningshan County.

Case Four: Changzhi County, Shanxi Province

The County. Situated at the southeast of Shanxi Province, Changzhi County has 6 towns and 5 townships with a dense population. Another rich county, it has an estimated coal reserve of over 3.4 billion tons. In 2012, its gdp hit rmb 18.5 billion, and the government revenue totaled rmb 5.73 billion. The per capita net income of rural residents was rmb 11,200 and the per capita disposable income of urban resident was rmb 21,400. There are a total of 75 kindergartens—3 public and 2 private kindergartens are situated in the urban area, and 44 public and 26 private kindergartens in the rural area. Among them, 49 are preschool classes and 6 of them are unregistered. 29

The Free Education Policy. The 15-year free education policy was launched on September 1, 2012 and has benefited 50,000 students in total. 30 All the registered kindergarteners, whether enrolled in a public or private kindergarten, can receive ece for free. All the fees, including tuition fee, administrative fee, health-care fee, and teaching materials fee, are exempted. But the exemption of tuition fee varies according to the ranking of the kindergartens: rmb 260 per month per head for the municipal first-class kindergartens, rmb 180 for the second class, rmb 110 for the third class, and rmb 60 for the fourth-class kindergartens and those affiliated to primary schools. The exemption of teaching materials fee is fixed at rmb 27 per head per semester. Accordingly, the county has to inject altogether rmb 16.2 million to waive all the fees for the 11,418 kindergarteners in one school year. 31

The Fiscal Investment Mechanism. The fiscal investment mechanism of Ningshan County is also shared by this county.

table 1

Comparison of the free ece policies in the four counties

The Coverage of the Free Education Policies

As shown in Table 1, only Changzhi County of Shanxi Province has achieved overall free education for the local children in both public and private kindergartens. The other three counties only provide free education to the registered public kindergarteners. In Zuoyun County of Shanxi Province, for example, only the children enrolled in public kindergartens can receive an almost free education. In other words, the so-called ‘free education policy’ in the three counties is not really ‘all kids free’.

The officially-approved fees that kindergartens in Shaanxi and Shanxi can charge include administration fee, tuition fee, health-care fee, teaching materials fee, and meal fee. In Changzhi County of Shanxi Province, the eligible children only need to pay for their meals every month with all the other fees being exempted, so it is almost ‘all fees free’. In Yulin City and Ningshan County of Shaanxi Province, the eligible children can only waive their tuition fee, hence, ‘all fees free’ does not apply to this context. In a similar vein, Shaanxi Province has unified its subsidy to all the eligible kindergarteners according to the standardized tuition fee charged by the provincial first-class kindergartens, that is, rmb 900 per head per school year. Zuoyun County of Shanxi Province, on the other hand, employs a differentiated approach: they pay for all the fees incurred by public kindergartens according to the different standardized fee levels of provincial key kindergartens (i.e. rmb 1,485 per head per year), kindergartens affiliated to primary schools (i.e. rmb 742 per head per year), and the private ones (i.e. rmb 508 per head per year). Again, this differentiated policy in Zuoyun County does not offer ‘all fees free’ to kindergarteners.

In conclusion, the free education policies in at least three of the four counties are neither ‘all kids free’ nor ‘all fees free’, and only those registered kindergarteners in Changzi can receive ece for free.

Discussion

The present study has found that the free early childhood education policies in three of the pioneering counties were neither ‘all kids free’ nor ‘all fees free’. This section will discuss the accessibility, affordability, accountability, and sustainability of these policies.

The Accessibility of Free ece Policies

Only the registered public kindergarteners are eligible for free ece in all the counties under study, except Changzhi. Private kindergarteners can only receive a limited subsidy from the government, and the parents still need to pay for the rest. This has heavily burdened the public kindergartens that, in turn, suffer under great admission pressure. In Yulin, for example, one third of the 20,000 kindergarteners who originally live in rural areas came to the county for free education. In this connection, the absence of ‘all kids free’ and ‘all fees free’ education has worsened the accessibility problem of ece in these counties. Further, with a large number of children moving to the urban areas for free ece, many rural kindergartens had to close down. If education is free everywhere, parents would rather send their children to kindergartens of higher quality in the urban areas. Therefore, the so-called free ece policy has become a driving force, though unintentionally, for the urbanization of rural residents. Consequently, without a sufficient number of good quality public and a scientific school places allocation system, the free ece policy will instead undermine the accessibility of kindergartens, disturb the social reform, and exacerbate the educational inequality and social justice problems in these counties.

The Affordability of Free Education Policies

Other than Changzhi, all the pioneering counties have only fully or partially solved the problem of affordability for registered public kindergarteners, but not for all local children as they only provide private kindergartens with a limited subsidy. But the reality is that private kindergartens dominate in most counties of China and the number of public schools is far from being sufficient. For example, in the county of Suide (a poor district in the north of Yulin), there is no public kindergarten, but only six private ones. No child is actually eligible to receive free kindergarten education in this entire county, and the policy is merely an empty promise.

Similarly, in the district of Yulin, there are only 3 public kindergartens, but the number of private ones hits 154. These private kindergartens charge parents very high fees. For example, Da Fengche Kindergarten (Shangjun Garden) is, at best, an upper-middle-level kindergarten and its tuition fee is rmb 9,600 per year. In this case, the rmb 900 subsidy provided by the government can only cover one tenth of the tuition fee. We can see that the problem of affordability is far from being resolved and two controversial issues underlie this phenomenon, namely, fiscal investment efficiency and educational inequality. Should all the children, rich or poor, receive free education? Should all the kindergartens, public or private, receive the same amount of subsidy? Whatever the answers are, in the poor inland areas, free education policy must help to increase the number of public kindergartens to solve the accessibility and affordability problems. Only in this way could the policy benefit the people who are truly in need.

The Accountability of Free Education Policies

None of the four counties has established a corresponding, scientific, and appropriate performance management and accountability system to safeguard the free ece policy. Better investment into ece will not only solve financial problems, but more importantly, it will also improve the quality and accountability. So far, however, no specific measures have been employed to ensure a transparent, accountable and effective use of the funds, or at least to assess the education quality and management performance. The accountability of these free education policy is indeed problematic.

To make matters worse, the four counties are all in rural areas that are in severe shortage of qualified teachers. The majority of kindergartens there are private, which vary greatly in terms of teacher qualifications and program quality. This is because the teachers in private kindergartens are not on government payroll and hence receive low remuneration. Notably, the increase in fiscal investment cannot naturally lead to the enhancement of their remuneration, management efficiency, and education quality. Without supporting measures, such as providing teacher training, salary increase, quality assurance, and so on, the free education policies will not have positive impacts on the accountability of ece.

The Sustainability of Free Education Policies

All the cases in this study except for Ningshan County are rich energy-based county. The historically high coal price has led to high economic income, which empowers the local government to implement the free ece policy. Yet, it is never rare to see governments getting trapped in financial difficulties and cities suffering from economic recession as coal resources deplete. The governments of the four counties should look for more solid and sustainable revenue resources. Besides, an alarming phenomenon is that the neighboring counties were trying to learn from these rich counties to implement free education policy, even though they do not have enough financial resource. For instance, Ningshan County in this study, has devoted 40% of its annual revenue to launch the free education policy—a very courageous attempt, which nevertheless, puts the sustainability of this policy to question.

As a matter of fact, the previous experience of implementing 9-year compulsory education in China has shown that the fiscal investment solely made by the county government is hard to sustain in rural areas, especially in poverty-stricken places in Middle and Western China. The so-called “Two Exemptions and One Subsidy” policy (exemption of textbook and incidental fees, and subsidy of living allowance) contributed greatly to the success of the 9-year compulsory education in rural China. This financial input comes from the central and provincial governments rather than the local county government. In fact, a similar strategy could also be used to promote free ece in rural areas. But the central government needs to take a differentiated approach to provide financial support to the agricultural counties in Eastern, Central and Western China, according to the specific financial situations of each province, city and county so as to meet their real needs. This could fundamentally solve the problem of sustainability.

table 2

Comparing the affordability, accessibility, accountability, and sustainability of the free ece policies in the four counties

Conclusion

This online multiple case study has found that the so-called ‘free education policy’ in the four counties are neither ‘all kids free’ nor ‘all fees free’. And the policy is largely dependent on the coal economy. Of the four cases, three have abundant coal resources. The skyrocketing coal price in the last decade has brought these governments enormous income. To make full use of the financial surplus, solve livelihood issues and make more political achievements, these county governments have found a way to channel the money out—by implementing 15-year free education. Undoubtedly, it is a politically right and professionally manageable decision. However, it has not completely solved the problem of the accessibility, affordability, accountability, and sustainability since the policies implemented in the three counties, apart from Changzhi County, only support partially free education. The implementation of the free ece policy by some local governments have once won people’s applauses as ece is not yet a component of free compulsory education. However, if the governments cannot properly define the nature and status of ece, the policy may squeeze the financial resources for the 9-year compulsory education and undermine its quality. It is arguable that, due to the lack of a scientific school places allocation system and a kindergarten quality assurance mechanism, the current free ece is not mature enough for scaling up to all rural areas in China. For example, the public kindergarten is very limited in capacity and the place allocation system is not open to the public. Many parents have no choice but to send their children to private kindergartens which only receive a reduced amount of subsidy from the government, thereby resulting in further inequality in education.

Nevertheless, this study carries implications for practical improvement. First, it might be a better solution to begin with the implementation of 1-year compulsory kindergarten education in rural areas that is financed and supervised by the central and/or provincial governments. Second, there is a pressing need to increase the number of public kindergartens and expand their coverage. Third, local governments need to increase the fiscal investment into private kindergartens and enhance the corresponding financial management. Fourth, the governments at all levels need to work together to increase the remuneration for kindergarten teachers, especially those working in rural and private kindergartens. Fifth, launching a 3-year kindergarten education voucher will help to promote fair competition and mutual development of public and private kindergartens in both rural and urban China. Although not really free for all children, these counties in focus have provided us some invaluable references for future education policy development. It is obvious that more rigorous research needs to be conducted in these piloting counties to work out better solutions and to truly advance the development of ece in the vast rural and urban areas of China.