From government to governance: School coalition for promoting educational quality and equity in China

Abstract

The major aim of recent school education reform in China is to improve educational equity and quality. This paper aims to explore a collaborative reform in a school district in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. The major focus of the reform has been a change of school management from “government” to “governance,” which is a shift from individual school effort to multi-school collaboration, from a single point development to a regional ecological development, as well as from loose development to excellence and equality development. Under such reform and through the school coalition among all schools within the district, high-quality and balanced development of the regional education has been promoted. Reform strategies in the school coalition studied include enhancing educational equity within the coalition; coordinating multiple powers; upholding educational quality by a shared curriculum; putting in extra resources to release school burdens; improving the quality of the teaching force; and developing an evidence-based comprehensive assessment system. The results of such changes not only promote teacher professional development but also meet students’ individual needs and growth. The schools involved in the collaborative endeavor have all earned support and recognition from parents, respect from the bureau, and a good reputation, and have improved competitiveness in Hangzhou.

Introduction

The National Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020) in China emphasizes that a balanced development is a major strategy for compulsory education, and, by 2020, all school-age children and adolescents should have received good compulsory education (Ministry of Education, 2010). It has set a new goal of achieving high-quality and balanced development in compulsory education in the modern era. By this policy, most schools are challenged on how to promote quality and balanced development within their regional education, how to run each school well, and how to meet the needs of the people for quality education.

Various school coalition models have emerged as a school reform strategy in many cities in China due to the request for a balance between quality and equitable education under such a policy. School coalitions may appear in various school grouping formats, for example, groups of schools with similar backgrounds, groups of prestigious schools leading weak schools, groups of schools with a long history of leading new schools, and so forth. School coalitions are formed with common wishes and they form a quality circle for self-improvement.

Each school coalition may be led by the principal of a prestigious school or a principal from a member school in rotation, as well as a decision-making body composed of principals of member schools, external experts and consultants, or university academics. Within a school coalition, unified strategic plans in educational development, common educational research, shared information technology, joint education evaluation, and shared school financial and human resources are highly emphasized. The member schools within a school coalition would have a common and shared curriculum and shared opportunities for professional development. A positive synergy is expected through shared efforts and collaborative endeavor for school improvement.

While schools in coalitions are unified in coordination and management to ensure the same standards of educational quality are applied, member schools are relatively independent and allowed to pursue their own school development. School coalitions are formed to achieve mutual assistance, mutual benefits, and growth together. The size of a school coalition may range from a group of a few schools to tens of schools, according to their own willingness and contexts in regions. School coalitions have appeared in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao, and some other capital cities, as innovative and collaborative models of school improvement in response to the quest for a balance of quality and equity in education required by this policy.

From government to governance

Salamon and Elliott (2002) refer to the shift from a government to a governance paradigm as a revolution that needs more attention. Daly (2003) refers to the term “governance” in terms of the changing nature of government and the distribution of power and control in society. Governance is concerned with the relationship between government and the governed, and how social and other public policies are conceptualized and addressed (Frahm and Martin, 2009). Comparing the differences between government and governance, Frahm and Martin (2009) find that the two paradigms vary on several dimensions, including:

The role of government. In the government paradigm, the state is the major actor. However, in the governance paradigm, the government is no longer the major actor and the government is one of many actors.

Authority and decision-making. The government paradigm is based on “command and control” oriented policies. However, in the governance paradigm, it is based on “negotiation and persuasion” (Salamon and Elliott, 2002).

System structure. The government paradigm is based upon a vertical hierarchical structure as per the organizational charts. However, the governance paradigm is based on a network.

Democratic process. The government paradigm is based on representative democracy. The governance paradigm is predicated on participatory democracy and citizens play a key role through direct participation (Hansen, 2001).

Governance theory is not only widely used in the fields of economy, society, and politics, but also plays an important role in the field of public utilities such as education, and has a profound impact on the supply mode of educational products, the reconstruction of public values, and public participation in educational decision-making, which contains the basic trend of contemporary public governance of education (Hudson, 2007). Good governance in education systems promotes effective delivery of education services (Lewis, M., & Pettersson, G. 2009 ). Educational governance means that the government, social organizations, the market, individuals, and others engage in the management of educational public affairs through participation, dialogue, negotiation, consultation, jointly producing or providing educational public products and services, and undertaking corresponding responsibilities.

The purpose of educational governance is to form a new education public service system which is oriented to student development and school reality, positively responding to changes in the internal and external environment and promoting the independent development of education. The difference in connotation between educational government and educational governance is similar to that in other fields. The transition from educational government to educational governance reflects the important direction of educational reform (Lawn and Lingard, 2002). Compulsory education is a public educational service system for which the government is mainly responsible. The government, schools, social market, and third parties are all regarded as the center of the governance process of compulsory education. They try to introduce multiple competition and cooperation mechanisms to guarantee and promote resource sharing in compulsory education and achieve balanced development. The quality and balanced development of regional compulsory education that we are committed to is also undergoing a process of evolution from government to governance.

Trends of school governance in the recent school coalition movement in Hangzhou

In most school coalitions in Hangzhou, the paradigm of school management has changed from the concept of government to governance. In the latter, collaboration among a wider spectrum of stakeholders is stressed. Several strategies have been adopted to restructure school governance in various districts. First, the bureaus of local districts attach great importance to the construction of a new educational community and provide guidance and support on the aspects of educational planning, educational resource allocation, public financial investment, and educational policy reformulation. Second, school–university partnership is promoted to improve the schools, that is, professional and academic support to the schools from colleges and universities is encouraged. The participating universities or colleges carry out systematic planning and professional guidance in strengthening school culture, curriculum design, improvement of pedagogies, and conducting school-based action research for improvement. Third, community participation is encouraged in school governance. The goal of community participation is to provide high-quality education for the needs of the community concerned. Enhanced community participation in school governance can solicit extra resources from the community and further optimize the effective allocation of educational resources. Fourth, schools are encouraged to form coalitions and to enhance collaborative endeavors. As an integral part of the collaborative community, all schools in the coalition would work together to undertake the responsibility of improving the school quality in the district with the support of the government policies, university specialties, and community resources. While schools in a coalition would promote the quality of education for their own students through self-management, self-optimization, and self-development, they should work collaboratively to uphold the overall quality and equity of education in the district. In the coalition, member schools are requested to form an open, inclusive, balanced, win–win community (Fei, 2014). The major aim of a school coalition is to coordinate the internal and external resources of regional education to assure the overall quality and equity of education in the district. By driving quality and balanced development of education in the district, the demands for quality education for the residents are met.

A modern education governance is evident in the Hangzhou districts, mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Effective reorganization of educational resources. Practice has proved that after the implementation of a school coalition, quality educational resources are widely implemented in different areas. At the same time, the school districts originally attached to famous schools become new famous schools and derive more quality educational resources through the development. Through the reorganization of quality educational resources, the educational resources in the old districts, new districts, and weak areas have been revitalized to maximize their effectiveness.

An innovative development of the educational system. In the process of school coalition, some coalitions in Hangzhou have made effective explorations in the establishment of scientific long-term mechanisms, and designed some brand-new systems that are helpful to the operation of the coalition. Among them are four successful mechanisms: (a) a sharing system, that is, the member schools share the famous school’s brand name and educational resources; (b) a constitutional system, that is, a coalition formulates programmatic documents used to guide and regulate the behavior of member schools, which coordinate the different education levels and traditions; (c) a deliberative system, that is, an education coalition regularly consults on major issues of development strategies, and discusses and formulates phased work priorities and frameworks; and (d) a supervising system, that is, a school coalition formulates unified standards of quality and assessment methods. The implementation of organized, planned, purposeful assessment and supervision of the education and teaching activities within the coalition would allow the professional development of teachers to ensure the quality of education.

An optimized school management. When the school coalition increases in size and scale and when the original school management model may not suitable, flat management has become the basic trend in education coalitions. While many coalitions set up a core leadership unit, such as a board of directors, to strengthen the coalition management, individual member schools may reduce institutional settings and management levels, strengthen functional management, and weaken the original administrative management (Fei, 2014).

Development of school–college–government partnership and cooperation

In many school coalitions, a school–college–community cooperation is promoted, which will serve a full coverage of all primary and secondary schools in the district. It aims at achieving the following objectives:

Creating a diversified synergy system. A new education community has been created with a multi-participatory governance, such as government guidance, university assistance, community participation, and school collaboration. Each member focuses on the school coalition’s developmental goals and is wholeheartedly responsible for their own roles and duties. Under the guidance of the government and with the help of professional experts from the universities, colleges, and scientific research institutions, the member schools will be guided in the re-construction of culture, re-design of the school curriculum, improvement in pedagogy, school-based action research, and sharing of resources among member schools. Furthermore, a greater degree of community participation, the establishment of the education fund, and strengthening collaboration and integration within the school coalition are emphasized.

Constructing a multi-dimensional high-end education council. The new education community has invited the participation of a wider spectrum of stakeholders, including the government, universities and colleges, the public communities, schools, and other entities to form a multi-dimensional high-end education council (the Council). The stakeholders’ diverse views of education are cautiously considered and hopefully a balance between rights and responsibilities in education can be reached. The Council will be the steering force on the decision-making system, execution system, evaluation system, and support system.

Deriving a decision-making system. The education council is the decision-making unit of the school–college–government cooperation community and the driving force for its rapid development. The Council members are representatives from the district education bureau, the district teacher training departments, colleges and universities, enterprises, the wider communities, schools, etc. Member schools in the community work relatively independently under the administration and leadership of the district education bureau and the overall guidance of the education council. The Council holds regular meetings to study the issues of community and school development, dispatch various resources, and provide guidance and assistance to member schools.

Strengthening the execution system. The education council has set up an administrative center, a teaching and research center, and a teaching and research group to implement the relevant work in the school district. The administrative center is responsible for the daily management and coordination of the new community, and implements the decisions of the Council in each school. The teaching and research center is in charge of organizing large-scale teaching activities, conducting teacher training, and leading research projects and promoting important initiatives. The teaching and research group is in charge of organizing and carrying out teaching and research activities based on disciplines to effectively solve the problem of weak teaching and research in individual schools.

Enforcing the quality assurance mechanism. Taking advantage of the unique talent advantages of universities and colleges, member schools have set up the academic committees, teaching steering committees, curriculum review committees, education and teaching quality assurance committees, etc. Member schools will invite well-known scholars, famous teachers, and prestigious principals as members of the quality assurance committees to participate in teaching appraisal, scientific research projects, curriculum review, quality evaluation, education supervision, and school development planning, and to provide consultancies on school administration and quality assurance to their schools. All these will work coherently to achieve the overall aims of balancing quality and equity of education provision in the district.

Soliciting support from parents. Parents are the allies of school education and an important force supporting school development. Member schools would develop a family education curriculum, establish school-level, grade-level, class-level family committees, and organize volunteer teams to guide parents to acquire new family education concepts, parenting styles , and to encourage parents to actively participate in school work.

Generally speaking, innovative multi-dimensional operating mechanisms and consultation, construction, and sharing are an inevitable global trend of school governance. This is a basic concept and proposition of institutional community-based governance. Under the leadership of the Council, the community breaks down the barriers between schools through renewal of the eight mechanisms in school governance, namely (a) teacher recruitment; (b) student enrollment; (c) expert recruitment; (d) resource sharing; (e) activities re-organization; (f) building of specific school characteristics; (g) re-scaling the economies of size; and (h) building connecting platforms, so as to achieve interactive, inter-connected, and win–win cooperation.

Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the concerned stakeholders of education

Based on the concept of governance, the new education community strives to seek effective governance of education through interaction and cooperation among the government, social organizations (including universities, enterprises, parents, and communities), schools, and individuals. The government and other social organizations are independent in their respective fields. As far as education is concerned, they are not subordinate to any bodies, but unified by the common goals of partnership and they assume their respective duties by performing different areas of expertise and jointly serving the ultimately shared goals of quality and balanced development of education in the district. This innovative endeavor is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

The government. The functions of the district government are mainly to implement rule-making, enforcement, supervision, and provision of resources. Therefore, the main function of the government in the field of education is to set policy goals, recommend and introduce various social organizations, and promote quality and balanced development of the regional education through regional planning, education resource allocation, public financial investment, education policy design, and monitoring educational quality.

Social organizations outside the school coalition. Social organizations (including universities, enterprises, parents, and public communities) mainly play the role of providing and producing quality public support and participating in the school management to promote transformation in the provision of public service by the government. Therefore, their role is mainly manifested in strategic development of school education, such as offering specialized teachers, providing funds for the schools’ needs, providing guidance and consultancy on improving the management of weak schools, and conducting professional and academic evaluation of school performance, etc.

The member schools. As an entity with legal status, a member school should be accountable for self-management, self-improvement, self-optimization, and self-development in the provision of quality and balanced education and development. Therefore, the member schools should utilize the new school governance structure to play an executive role appointing faculty and staff, improving the effectiveness of self-management, self-optimization, and self-renewal in core areas such as curriculum development and teaching and learning management, and performing independent evaluation of outcomes (Fei, 2014).

Creating a network school governance structure

A new school governance structure with the participation of multiple stakeholders has been set up.

The education council. The representatives of the new education community come from the local government, education administrative departments, teacher training departments, social organizations (universities, enterprises, public communities), and member schools, etc. Schools in the community execute a principal responsibility system under the leadership of the Council. Each school may carry out its work relatively independently under the district education bureau and operational guidance of the Council. When difficulties in the running of these schools are encountered in the community, the problems are reported to the Council. The Council will offer advice and consultancy to these schools relating to the issues of revising the schools’ goals and visions, ways to improve the effectiveness of school management and administration, reviewing the staff establishment, recruitment of teachers with specific talents, and deriving school-based scientific research projects. All these will form the priorities in the schools’ strategic plan and annual school action plans. That is, while all schools in the community adhere to the Council organically, each member school is allowed to develop independently according to its own needs and individual characteristics.

Professional committees. In addition to the establishment of a board of directors, most new education communities have also established management steering committees, teaching steering committees, curriculum review and evaluation committees, education and teaching evaluation committees, parent committees, etc., dedicated to teacher appraisal, lesson study, teaching supervision, approval of scientific research projects, curriculum review, quality assurance, continuous school improvement, etc. These committees serve, guide, and support the member schools within a coalition synergistically.

Think tank. Within the new education community, think tanks on various teaching focuses, such as famous-teacher workstations, expert-teacher workshops, and mentor–mentee teams, have been set up. These think tanks, composed of various expert teams, will derive the contents and methods in school-based research. In addition, the expert teams will provide specialized support in teacher training and teaching research, and solve practical problems in education and teaching through their designed projects. They also work jointly with individual schools to determine school-based projects for solving problems in school development, and in the processes of improvement of teaching quality (Fei, 2014).

The network governance structure within the new education community reflects the characteristics of manifold interests and roles, as well as multiple stakeholders being involved in governance, emphasizing the diversity of views of school governance and the multi-centralization of power and authority. In network governance, the government fulfills the responsibility of public service provision and governance of policy formulation. The enterprise undertakes the obligation of supporting educational funds and conducts the supervision and performance evaluation of the use of funds. The council, professional committees, expert tanks, and member schools are relatively independent in carrying out special studies and various educational activities within their respective areas of expertise (Fei, 2014).

The council coordinates and solves the schooling and teaching problem which the school faces and carries out conflict mediation. This kind of governance structure has changed the government-centered structure in the past and made the decentralization of education governance possible. Hence, the new educational governance is more effective in distribution of power and influence among the government, the society, enterprises, schools, and citizens. Through the transformation and transfer of responsibilities and adjustment of the boundary of government management, an equitable distribution of power and influence among different stakeholders of education is realized (Fei, 2014).

Restructuring school governance in Jianggan District, Hangzhou

This paper takes the school coalition in Jianggan District in Hangzhou as an example to explain how school management is restructured, changing from the concept of government to the paradigm of governance to promote quality and balanced development of all schools in the region.

Jianggan District of Hangzhou is located in the east of Hangzhou City in Zhejiang Province. It is a district that combines urban and suburban areas. It has a typical urban–rural dual structure. The scale of urban schools is small and the academic level of the rural schools is low. Educational development in the district is slow and not balanced in terms of quality and equity.

With the rapid advancement of urbanization, in order to solve the dilemma of unbalanced regional education development, many school districts in Hangzhou have also adopted school coalition models as the improvement strategy. Taking Hangzhou as an example, by the end of 2011, Hangzhou had set up 210 school coalitions, including 76 in the main urban areas, with a coverage rate of 70.33%. There were 47 preschool education coalitions in the main urban areas, with a coverage rate of 35.66%. The school coalition under this study is one of the regions in Hangzhou, that is, Jianggan District, which is a school coalition of similar background and the principals of member schools play the leadership roles in rotation.

On the basis of implementing the strategy of school coalition and taking education governance as a concept, the government of Jianggan District has created a new education community based on the practice and research of school governance. Promoting the overall development of the school region has initiated several endeavors that include enhancing education equity within a coalition, coordinating multiple powers, upholding educational quality by a shared curriculum, putting in extra resources to release school burdens, improving the quality of the teaching force, and developing an evidence-based comprehensive assessment system.

Enhancing education equity within a coalition

In addition, due to the shortage of public education resources, education equity is always an issue. In order to solve the problem of enrolling children of migrant workers who meet the requirements, since 2013 the Jianggan District Education Bureau has adopted a government purchasing scheme to buy education services from private schools. The various modes of the purchasing scheme may include renting of private school premises, paying tuition fees to private schools for places, upgrading public expenditure per student in private schools according to the standards of public schools, and offering teacher professional development and augmenting training expenses for private schools to improve the overall quality of education in the private sector. Through the government’s purchase of services, all eligible children of migrant workers can enjoy free, compulsory, and quality education.

Coordinating the community’s multiple powers

Since 2007, Jianggan District has successively introduced six universities, colleges, and research institutes from inside and outside of the province to enhance school–university cooperation. These higher educational institutions include Hangzhou Normal University, Zhejiang Normal University, Zhejiang Research Institute of Education Science, and East China Normal University. The initial cooperation between universities and colleges was mainly a single point-to-point collaboration between universities and schools. After the school coalition and the idea of advancing the development of the whole region, all participating schools in the district formed as one unit with multiple participation and coordination of universities, the government, and the member schools.

Upholding educational quality by a shared curriculum

In order to meet the needs of different parents and students, the school coalition has carried out a cross-school shared curriculum by various shifting modes of teachers and students: fixed-classroom shifting-student mode, teacher-shifting student-in-class mode, and online teaching mode.

Fixed-classroom shifting-student mode. That is, teachers teach in their designated classrooms within a school and students can choose different curriculums across schools. This mode of teaching allows the implementation of shared curriculum across schools within the coalition/region.

Teacher-shifting student-in-class mode. That is, teachers teaching the regional shared curriculum shift from one school to the other schools. This mode is adopted mainly in cases where students are younger, it is inconvenient to move to another school, or when the number of students in a school choosing the curriculum is large. Teachers may decide the teaching mode independently according to the student needs, the characteristics of the shared curriculum, and the mode of delivery whether in large class teaching, group cooperation, club experience or competition.

Online teaching mode. That is, making full use of modern information technology, building a regional shared curriculum network, creating a resource library, and carrying out online distance teaching and learning. This mode can break the school time and space barriers, expand the online learning space, and achieve personalized teaching and learning.

Shared curriculum can also be made into video clips to build a video resource database, courseware library, case database, curriculum resource library, etc. For students with limited access to the Internet, the coalition has also made shared curriculum CD-ROMs for students who choose curriculums to study after class or study at home. The shared curriculums facilitate the development of cooperation and resource sharing among schools within the coalition, making the exchange activities more extensive among schools, richer in content, and more diverse. Such in-depth sharing has enhanced teachers’ curriculum and teaching leadership, broadened teachers’ horizons, and rapidly improved the school curriculum standards. Furthermore, it has also met the diverse learning needs of students, allowed students to enjoy a more personalized education, and improved the quality of school education.

Placing extra resources to release school burdens

In addition to purchasing education services from the private school sector, the Jianggan District Education Council has decided to put extra resources into schools to release their burden of school management and to uphold the overall quality of education in each member school. The Council decided to purchase consultancy on school management reform and educational evaluation services from universities, research institutions, and other social organizations in supporting member schools’ improvement in efficiency and effectiveness. As for special educational needs, qualified social rehabilitation institutions are invited and paid to offer home education services for severely disabled children of compulsory education age (7 to 15 years old). Besides, normal and routine professional development activities, tailor-made training, and professional development opportunities from universities and teacher training institutions are also increased and addressed to schools’ individual needs. Teachers in the school coalition are further supported by purchasing extra logistics services from out-sourcing of housekeeping and school campus maintenance, so that teachers can concentrate more on teaching and learning by being released from the pressure of school management. More significantly, by offering and equalizing educational resources among member schools in the coalition, educational equity can be better realized, which is an important indicator of educational modernization in China.

Improving the quality of the teaching force

Jianggan District took teacher recruitment and their professional development as an important means for achieving educational quality and equity. A number of measures have been taken by the education council of the district in order to build a high-quality teaching force.

In order to attract outstanding talents to become teachers, more than CN¥20m was spent in 2018 in the construction of young teachers’ apartments to reduce the living costs of young teachers effectively. The education council has institutionalized a regional honor system in recognition of outstanding teachers’ contributions. Exemplary teachers can be selected and awarded the titles of “Qiantang Teacher,” “Gold and Silver Awards for Teaching,” and “Honorary Head Teacher.” These encourage teachers’ motivation for teaching, the passion of being a teacher, and an enhanced sense of belonging and dedication.

The Jianggan District Education Council has created a framework for teacher professional development and training to enhance teachers’ capabilities in teaching and research. The teacher professional development framework integrates the efforts of member schools, the coalition, research institutes, and universities, to benefit all teachers within the coalition and promote continuous professional development for all teachers.

Developing an evidence-based comprehensive assessment system

Jianggan District has established a “three-comprehensiveness” quality concept, that is, focus on “all students, all-round development, and the whole process of education,” and optimizes the evaluation system from three dimensions, namely, academic level; comprehensive quality; and learning status and growth environment.

First, it adopts the value-added evaluation to stimulate academic performance. It is student-oriented, takes into account the starting point and differences of students, and adopts the five-level increment evaluation to stimulate the development potential of students and schools, and obtain more sense of success.

Second, it adopts a comprehensive quality concept of social and affective development. Assessments focus more on student moral performance, physical health, mental health, artistic aesthetics, innovative practice, etc. The Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Quality Evaluation of Primary and Secondary School Students in Jianggan District was released, to strengthen the evaluation of music, sports, art, and comprehensive activity curricula.

Third, it evaluates students’ learning status and growth parameters through a questionnaire survey on nine indicators: student sense of identity; teacher–student relationship; learning motivation; communication and cooperation; high-level thinking; exploratory learning; learning pressure; homework burden; and sleep status. This enables an understanding of the relevant factors that affect student learning, further implementing the requirements for reducing burden and driving the improvement of the education ecology.

Conclusion

Through multi-dimensional measures such as constructing a new education community, reforming education evaluation, and retraining teachers, the educational quality and equity in Jianggan District has achieved important results. The member schools have been developing steadily and achieved great success. Jianggan District has been approved as one of the first national exemplars of compulsory education development and its overall education modernization index has been ranked fourth in Zhejiang Province. The overall level of educational quality in Jianggan District is at the forefront in Hangzhou City. At present, the coverage rate of quality compulsory education resources in this district has reached 97.99%, the quality of education has been continuously improved, and the level of satisfaction by the people in the district has been continuously increased.

The new education community in Jianggan District is a microcosm of vigorously promoting high-standard and balanced development of compulsory education. All parties concerned strive to promote the development of the new community, which comprises the government (the district education bureau), social organizations (including universities, enterprises, parents, and communities), and schools. Individual interaction and cooperation are strengthened to seek effective governance of education. The experiences gained in the improvement process are as follows:

A network governance has been formed. The new education community forms a network that connects famous and weak schools, universities, research institutes, old schools, and new schools.

A contiguous development model has been formed. The regional allied community, which includes the teaching research system; teacher professional development institutions, colleges, and universities; the educational bureau; and groups of schools, puts a high priority on mutual assistance and cooperation in the community. Six joint ventures have been established and implemented, that is, joint construction of school culture, joint resource sharing, joint recruitment of teachers, joint enrollment of students, joint school activities, and joint leadership between small and medium-sized schools. Through joint efforts which will give greater outputs, the member schools in the new community still have diversified choices for the development of their students.

An organizational infrastructure involving multiple participants has been formed. In terms of internal environment, various new types of education committees have been formed and become an important infrastructure in the school coalition. For example, a board of directors, the teaching steering committee, the curriculum review and evaluation committee, the parent committee, and so forth. The infrastructure of the new education community has changed from the concept of government as the center to multiple participation in school governance, multiple roles and interest in school education, decentralization of power, and diversification of expertise and distribution in leadership.

An innovative system of public educational services has been formed. Owing to the shortage of public education resources at the beginning, and in order to solve the problems due to enrolling children of migrant workers who usually have weak family backgrounds, the Jianggan District Education Bureau has adopted a government purchase strategy to buy school places and opportunities from the private school sector, so that all children of migrant workers can enjoy free, compulsory, and quality education without any discrimination. The buying in of additional educational services from the private sector is a pioneering and innovative initiative for Jianggan District, which serves to promote the level of provision of public educational service, as well as to achieve the objective of offering quality and equal schools to every child.

Through school coalition and transformation of educational management from the concept of government to social participation in governance, from individual school effort to concerted school effort, from partial development to holistic and coherent development, from loose development to quality and equitable development, a new education community has been formed. In short, the new education community in Jianggan District, Hangzhou has amalgamated the strengths of the local government, outstanding industries and enterprises, and elite colleges and universities to form the partnership. The new education community emphasizes the unity of interests or values among member schools, sharing of resources, and synergy in collaborative endeavor. By all these, the quality and equity of education in the district have been greatly enhanced, which has met the overall aims of The National Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020), which emphasizes balanced development in compulsory education by 2020 in China.

A final remark here is that, since April 2021, Jianggan District has been merged into Shangcheng district (a greater and prosperous one) by the Government of Hangzhou City. It will be worth noting in the coming years whether the goals of quality and balanced education by the original school coalition of the former Jianggan District are still being upheld or are distorted.