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China Compulsory Education Law
The Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, which took effect
July 1, 1986, established requirements and deadlines for attaining
universal education tailored to local conditions and guaranteed
school-age children the right to receive education. People's
congresses at various local levels were, within certain guidelines
and according to local conditions, to decide the steps, methods,
and deadlines for implementing nine-year compulsory education in
accordance with the guidelines formulated by the central
authorities. The program sought to bring rural areas, which had
four to six years of compulsory schooling, into line with their
urban counterparts. Education departments were exhorted to train
millions of skilled workers for all trades and professions and to
offer guidelines, curricula, and methods to comply with the reform
program and modernization needs.
Provincial-level authorities were to develop plans, enact
decrees and rules, distribute funds to counties, and administer
directly a few key secondary schools. County authorities were to
distribute funds to each township government, which were to make up
any deficiencies. County authorities were to supervise education
and teaching and to manage their own senior middle schools,
teachers' schools, teachers' in-service training schools,
agricultural vocational schools, and exemplary primary and junior
middle schools. The remaining schools were to be managed separately
by the county and township authorities.
The compulsory education law divided China into three
categories: cities and economically developed areas in coastal
provinces and a small number of developed areas in the hinterland;
towns and villages with medium development; and economically
backward areas. By November 1985 the first category--the larger
cities and approximately 20 percent of the counties (mainly in the
more developed coastal and southeastern areas of China) had
achieved universal 9-year education. By 1990 cities, economically
developed areas in coastal provincial-level units, and a small
number of developed interior areas (approximately 25 percent of
China's population) and areas where junior middle schools were
already popularized were targeted to have universal junior-middle-
school education. Education planners envisioned that by the
mid-1990s all workers and staff in coastal areas, inland cities,
and moderately developed areas (with a combined population of 300
million to 400 million people) would have either compulsory 9-year
or vocational education and that 5 percent of the people in these
areas would have a college education--building a solid intellectual
foundation for China. Further, the planners expected that secondary
education and university entrants would also increase by the year
2000.
The second category targeted under the 9-year compulsory
education law consisted of towns and villages with medium-level
development (around 50 percent of China's population), where
universal education was expected to reach the junior-middle-school
level by 1995. Technical and higher education was projected to
develop at the same rate.
The third category, economically backward (rural) areas (around
25 percent of China's population) were to popularize basic
education without a timetable and at various levels according to
local economic development, though the state would "do its best" to
support educational development. The state also would assist
education in minority nationality areas
(see Minority Nationalities
, ch. 2). In the past, rural areas, which lacked a
standardized and universal primary education system, had produced
generations of illiterates; only 60 percent of their primary school
graduates had met established standards.
As a further example of the government's commitment to
nine-year compulsory education, in January 1986 the State Council
drafted a bill passed at the Fourteenth Session of the Standing
Committee of the Sixth National People's Congress that made it
illegal for any organization or individual to employ youths before
they had completed their nine years of schooling. The bill also
authorized free education and subsidies for students whose families
had financial difficulties.
Data as of July 1987
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