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Domestic Education Initiatives
As an emerging nation of 1.6 billion people, China faces very unique challenges in providing an accessible and quality education to its youth. In 1985 the Chinese government held the National Conference on Education aimed at producing more able people and improving secondary education, and a resulted in the creation of a nine-year compulsory education law. 65
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| Beijing Tsinghua University http://www.flickr.com/photos/ auws/235923498/ |
Many of the reforms and initiatives undertaken by the Chinese government have been efforts to bring rural education standards in-line with standards in urban areas. With 70 percent of its population living in rural areas, this is a legitimate concern. “To help remedy the inequalities, on December 27, 2005 the government announced that China will spend 218 billion yuan (27.25 billion U.S. dollars) over five years to help improve rural education.”66
At the “Fifth High Level Group Meeting on Education for All” sponsored by UNESCO, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao listed China’s three primary education goals as compulsory education, vocational education, and illiteracy elimination and developing education in rural areas.67
China is also acknowledging the role in privately-run schools to help fulfill China’s education needs. In 2005, a law was passed on the promotion of privately run schools. With 1.17 million educational institutions services a total of 318 million students in 2002, such initiatives are necessary in order to lessen the immense burden on the Chinese government of providing education.68
International Education Initiatives
Much like the United States, China is reaching out to develop educational partnerships with other nations and foreign educational institutions.
China-United Kingdom Collaboration
In 1996, China and the United Kingdom created the Sino-UK Higher Education Collaboration Programme with the aim of “contributing to the development of higher education in the UK and China by learning from one another’s experience, and to strengthen links and strategic collaboration.”69
The collaboration continues today and has lead to the eChina-UK eLearning Programme. The project comprises a number of teacher training projects in which British and Chinese teams worked to develop and pilot eLearning materials. The programme also has been conducting research on education in China, specifically with regards to eLearning.70
One such initiative of the eChina-UK eLearning Programme is the Chinese University Teacher Training in English (CUTE). This one-year programme between the University of Cambridge and Tsinghua University in Beijing focused on developing eLearning materials to train Chinese University Teaching Staff so that they can teach their subject matter in English.71 Since its first year pilot, CUTE has been followed by CUTE 2, which integrates face-to-face instruction with online instruction.
65 Tao, Liquing, and Margaret Berci and Wayne He. “Historical Background: Expansion of Public Education.” New York Times.
66 Ibid.
67 http://www.edu.cn/20051130/3163495.shtml
68 http://www.edu.cn/Researchedu_1498/ 20060323/t20060323_113688.shtml
69 http://www.britishcouncil.org/china-education-higher-mou.htm
70 http://www.echinauk.org/overview1.php?main=1&sub=1
71 http://www.echinauk.org/cases/cases.php?main=4&sub=0
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