The stage is set for China to begin making significant strides in educational
development. First, China’s economy is buoyant, with a projected annual growth rate of 8
to 10 percent over the next twenty years. As such, additional resources should readily be
available from both public and private sources. Second, demographic profile is favorable to
the education sector, in particular, the size of the school-age population is declining,
reflecting that financial burden both on the government and on working adults will be
reduced (Fig 1). Third, shifts in the structure of the economy—rapid employment growth in
the industrial and service sectors as well as an increase in the number of workers with postprimary
education—mean that China’s education sector will assume an increasingly
prominent role in the economic growth. (Table 1, Annex 1).
To take advantage of these opportunities, however, China must confront major
challenges at each level of its educational system. At the primary level, for example, only
two-thirds of primary school students currently complete their entire primary cycle,
completion rates are particularly low among poor regions and female students at the
secondary level, many families lack the incentive to send their children in school, due
largely to both economic and cultural factors. And at the higher level, coverage is extremely
low, and the subsector has been slow to respond to the emerging labor market demand
inspired by China’s growing economy. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to assess the
current status of education in China with a regional perspective, to examine the main
challenges, and to propose strategic directions for creating an externally efficient education
system that enables the country to enter the 21st century on a sound footing