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China SECONDARY EDUCATION
Middle Schools
Secondary education in China has a complicated history. In the
early 1960s, education planners followed a policy called "walking
on two legs," which established both regular academic schools and
separate technical schools for vocational training. The rapid
expansion of secondary education during the Cultural Revolution
created serious problems; because resources were spread too thinly,
educational quality declined. Further, this expansion was limited
to regular secondary schools; technical schools were closed during
the Cultural Revolution because they were viewed as an attempt to
provide inferior education to children of worker and peasant
families. In the late 1970s, government and party representatives
criticized what they termed the "unitary" approach of the 1960s,
arguing that it ignored the need for two kinds of graduates: those
with an academic education (college preparatory) and those with
specialized technical education (vocational). Beginning in 1976
with the renewed emphasis on technical training, technical schools
reopened, and their enrollments increased (as did those of key
schools, also criticized during the Cultural Revolution). In the
drive to spread vocational and technical education, regular
secondary-school enrollments fell. By 1986 universal secondary
education was part of the nine year compulsory education law that
made primary education (six years) and junior-middle-school
education (three years) mandatory. The desire to consolidate
existing schools and to improve the quality of key middle schools
was, however, under the education reform, more important than
expanding enrollment.
Chinese secondary schools are called middle schools and are
divided into junior and senior levels. In 1985 more than 104,000
middle schools (both regular and vocational) enrolled about 51
million students. Junior, or lower, middle schools offered a three
year course of study, which students began at twelve years of age.
Senior, or upper, middle schools offered a two or three year
course, which students began at age fifteen.
The regular secondary-school year usually had two semesters,
totaling nine months. In some rural areas, schools operated on a
shift schedule to accommodate agricultural cycles. The academic
curriculum consisted of Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry,
geology, foreign language, history, geography, politics,
physiology, music, fine arts, and physical education. Some middle
schools also offered vocational subjects. There were thirty or
thirty-one periods a week in addition to self-study and
extracurricular activity. Thirty-eight percent of the curriculum at
a junior middle school was in Chinese and mathematics, 16 percent
in a foreign language. Fifty percent of the teaching at a senior
middle school was in natural sciences and mathematics, 30 percent
in Chinese and a foreign language.
Rural secondary education has undergone several transformations
since 1980, when county-level administrative units closed some
schools and took over certain schools run by the
people's communes (see Glossary).
In 1982 the communes were eliminated. In 1985
educational reform legislation officially placed rural secondary
schools under local administration. There was a high dropout rate
among rural students in general and among secondary students in
particular, largely because of parental attitudes. All students,
however, especially males, were encouraged to attend secondary
school if it would lead to entrance to a college or university
(still regarded as prestigious) and escape from village life.
In China a senior-middle-school graduate is considered an
educated person, although middle schools are viewed as a training
ground for colleges and universities. And, while middle-school
students are offered the prospect of higher education, they are
also confronted with the fact that university admission is limited.
Middle schools are evaluated in terms of their success in sending
graduates on for higher education, although efforts persist to
educate young people to take a place in society as valued and
skilled members of the work force.
Data as of July 1987
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