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A book holds a house of gold: Observations on educational inequality in Chengdu, China

书中自有黄金屋,书中自有颜如玉[1]

Chengdu is the centuries-old capital of Sichuan Province, sprawling in a valley surrounded by the Tibetan mountains, home to pandas and spicy cuisine. It is also an up-and-coming financial center and critical hub for technological innovation in China’s southwestern region. As a result, the competition to get into educational institutions such as the famous Sichuan University is becoming fiercer. Private tutoring, or shadow education, has exploded as a lucrative sector for both native Chinese and foreign workers in response to the demand for better performance on the gaokao, China’s college entrance examination. The gaokao is considered one of the most stressful and difficult tests in the world, and good scores for test-takers can translate more than university options, which is why the pressure for students is so high (Ming, 2016). However, disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities or rural migrants find it difficult to achieve high scores despite the so-called equality of public education. In fact, 95% of rural students drop out of the education system before they even take their college entrance exams (“China’s Education Gap”, 2016). Chengdu, with its growing economy and increased rural-to-urban migration, is one of many such cases.

I came to Chengdu in 2014 and stayed for three years, working as an English teacher in university settings, formal elementary and high school classrooms, and as a “shadow” tutor for businessmen and students preparing for overseas colleges. Over that time, I came to understand some of the fundamental differences in access to public services and quality education between poorer students and wealthy ones. While my personal experience and anecdotes may seem like just that—personal and limited—they are a microcosmic reflection of situations occurring all around China. There is a real problem with educational inequality in China that is affecting future prospects for the already under-resourced and marginalized, one that can only be addressed by first understanding how mechanisms like private tutoring both fulfill a demand but create barriers to access.

First, competition between private tutoring institutions is intense, but because shadow education is, in general, unregulated by the Chinese state, quality varies wildly. Public education, too, has fallen prey to marketization in a divergence from the professed strategic goal of equality in the education system (World Bank, 1999). So, even amongst public high schools there is a big push to get the best students and best teachers[2]. Private tutoring helps middle school students gain access to better high schools, whether public or private, and so on and so forth up the educational chain. As Wei Zhang and Mark Bray discuss in their study of shadow education in Shanghai, differentiation of access to private tutoring has “offset” the ostensible equalization policies present in public schools and allowed “privileged families and elite schools” to compete on a totally different playing field (p. 221). Chengdu is much the same in that the only way to guarantee a good quality private tutor or public school is to pay extra money. Private and foreign institutions, however, can usually pay more money to attract better teachers and do more advertising in wealthy neighborhoods, thus quality is being condensed into those private and foreign institutions. Despite the lack of standardization, high demand for private tutoring services has not abated, and those who cannot afford to pay a high price will lose out on quality.

Second, while access to private tutoring is not the sole reason for wealthy students’ success on the gaokao, access to quality education in general is a huge factor. Private tutoring supplements a public education that has not kept up with student and parent demand (Li, 2016), offering new and different opportunities like English classes, art classes, writing courses for students who are applying to overseas universities, and other specialized content. I helped a classroom of teenagers write argumentative essays for the SAT, as well as college motivation letters, and their opportunity to learn directly from me (a foreigner who had participated in the U.S. education system) was available to them because of their socioeconomic status. Likewise, children who I taught in the “elite” i2 Institute of International Education were privy to personalized classes and extra assistance on homework, and most of them were preparing to enter competitive high schools and colleges.

Unequal access to higher education for disadvantaged groups occurs because high-quality private and public schools favor certain socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds (Wang, 2010). Nobody can make a profit from teaching a Tibetan, or a migrant worker’s daughter from Aba in the far western part of Sichuan Province. They might still manage to be successful on their own, but it is unlikely when quality resources are being funneled towards the privileged. This is why, in many ways, Chinese public schools are not succeeding in meeting the state’s strategic goals for equitable education. The demographic difference in quality is even more obvious when foreign schools are taken into consideration. I lived across the street from the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and knew many of the people who worked there. Some of my friends were teachers in the local QSI (Quality Schools International) elementary school, a private institution for children of foreigners, consulate workers, and diplomats. This was one of the only places that required a master’s degree in education and continuous training. (My place of work, for comparison, hired some who were still in the middle of their undergraduate schooling and had no prior tutoring experience.) Rich Chinese parents would send their children to QSI because it had a great international reputation, but one of the only reasons they were able to get in was because they were able to purchase passports from Hong Kong that “proved” their children were “international” and therefore qualified to be in a foreign school (Fraser, 2018). It is not hard to see how easy it is for a privileged child to succeed on a much bigger scale—even beyond Chengdu and China—as opposed to one who does not even have access to updated gaokao textbooks because their school is underfunded.

My final point is this: there is a clear connection between wealth, educational attainment, and future prospects (Rong & Shi, 2001). Wealthier youth are more likely to go to both vocational schools and universities, but especially if they come from a certain demographic background (Liu, 2013) and wealthier youth in my personal experience are infinitely more likely to have a better, more exciting life. They can travel, study abroad, have good jobs and job performance. While private tutoring is filling a certain gap in demand that public education has been unable meet, it is the symptom of a wider problem of inequality and lack of quality. This brings us back to problems of access for rural-to-urban migrating students (Li, 2008) and disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities. It is difficult to draw any conclusions about shadow tutoring and teaching in Chengdu, however. Equity versus excellence is a big topic in China now, but there is a dearth of research on the subject as it plays out in cities like Chengdu, which are not on the coast and have not received as much attention as Beijing or Shanghai. But if the proverb is true that “a book holds a house of gold,” then the best books that hold the best houses are still unavailable to many in Chengdu.

References and Works Cited

China’s Education Gap – A Surprising Factor of Rural Poverty. (2016, November 29). Retrieved from

https://projectpartner.org/poverty/chinas-education-gap-a-surprising-factor-in-rural-poverty/

Fraser, N. (2018, January 10). Passports for sale: Rich Chinese, the new super immigrants. Retrieved

from https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2071903/passports-sale-why-rich-chinese-are-new-super-immigrant

Li, Ran, “Shadow Education in China: What is the relationship between private tutoring and

students’ National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) Performance?” (2016).

Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 15754. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15754

Li, W. (2008). Education inequality in China: problems of policies on access to higher education.

Journal of Asian Public Policy, 1(1), 115-123. doi: 10.1080/17516230801900444

Liu, Y. (2013). Meritocracy and the Gaokao: a survey study of higher education selection and socio-

economic participation in East China. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5-6), 868-887. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2013.816237

Ming, X. (2013, July 13). China’s exam high-scorers weighed down by unrealistic expectations.

Retrieved from http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/994073.shtml

Rong, X. & Shi, T. (2001). Inequality in Chinese Education. Journal of Contemporary

China10(26),107-124. doi: 10.1080/10670560124330

Wang, H. (2010). Research on the Influence of College Entrance Examination Policies on the

Fairness of Higher Education Admissions Opportunities in China. Chinese Education & Society43(6), 15-35. doi: 10.2753/CED1061-1932430601

World Bank. 1999. Strategic goals for Chinese education in the 21st century (English). Washington,

DC: World Bank. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/203951468768863829/Strategic-goals-for-Chinese-education-in-the-21st-century

Zhang, W., & Bray, M. (2017). Equalising schooling, unequalising private supplementary

tutoring: Access and tracking through shadow education in China. Oxford Review of

Education, 44(2), 221-238. doi:10.1080/03054985.2017.1389710

 

[1] Shū zhōng zì yǒu huáng jīn wū, shū zhōng zì yǒu yán rú yù. Literally, “in books are sumptuous houses and graceful ladies.” Figuratively means “study hard, success and glory will follow.”

[2] The differences between rural and urban schools, as well as how public education is funded, are complicated issues beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that Chengdu has strict hukou laws which prevent rural-to-urban migrant students from accessing high-quality public schools where the provincial and national governments concentrate more resources.

Merit or Money? Causes and effects of educational inequality in the PRC

“In China, which pioneered the use of merit‑based examinations to fill official positions, an educational system that was once a great equalizer now reinforces inequality.”

 –Helen Gao, China’s Education Gap

In an increasingly competitive and globalized job market, it is obvious why parents who can afford to will confer the advantages of wealth onto their children. This is especially true in China, where education has long been regarded as a ladder for social mobility and the pressures of getting into a prestigious university are higher than ever.

Some, like the China-focused journalist Helen Gao, consider that education in its ideal form serves as a “great equalizer” through which students of all backgrounds can participate to become prosperous, but it can also be all but inaccessible to the already under-resourced. As is seen in China and elsewhere, unequal distribution of educational opportunities is one way that wealth and power is concentrated into the hands of an already-tiny elite, and this is not a unique phenomenon. Higher education in the People’s Republic of China is one such case where family socioeconomic status, educational achievement, and dignified jobs go hand in hand (Li, 2016)—against the mandate of the world’s sustainable development goals of quality education, reduced inequalities, and decent work[1].

There are many reasons why the rural and poor in China are not receiving the benefits that the urban rich do in terms of educational inputs and economic outputs:

  • the hukou [household registration] system, which is a residency status that determines a person’s access to social services like schools[2], and one that also prevents legal rural-to-urban migration (Fu & Ren, 2010);
  • the lopsided financing of rural schools versus urban (Li, 2016);
  • a historical culture of “persisting educational elitism” and the competitive nature of private tutoring (Zhang & Bray, 2017);
  • and the direct correlation between gaokao [college entrance examination] scores and access to both elite universities and well-paying jobs (Zhang, Li, & Xue, 2015).

Education inequality between rural and urban areas is not uncommon in many parts of the world, but institutional exclusion has been exacerbated by the privatization of educational opportunities in the PRC, which in the end affects the livelihoods of those who are shut out of the system and the economic growth prospects of the nation as a whole.

Extensive private tuition…exacerbates social inequalities.

—Francoise Caillods, UNESCO

Playing a role in the exacerbation of education inequality in China is the presence of private tutoring, which has grown into a huge industry since Deng Xiaoping proclaimed China’s “reform and opening up” to de-collectivization, competition, foreign investment, and privatization in 1978. In the 1990s, private education started to become an area of interest for foreign education policy researchers. Thus, the influence of private tutoring in China, or shadow education, has been explored by numerous academics and journalists over the years. To sum up over a decade of work[3], students who have hukou status in rural areas do not have the same access to good education that students in urban areas do. They are also, on average, poorer and cannot afford private tutoring to bolster their academic performance or migrate to urban areas with better schooling (Fu & Ren, 2010). As a result, many under-resourced students do not perform as well on the gaokao and cannot gain entry to elite universities (Yanbi & Minhui, 2010). This, in turn, has a direct impact on employment opportunities because of elitist guanxi [connections]: many companies hire well-educated and well-off “princelings” based on who they know and where they went to school, rather than by merit. While this might seem to indicate that anyone can get ahead if they know the right people, guanxi is easily bought and elite school networks are still inaccessible to the poor, rural students whose parents have no ability gain access themselves (Li, 2016).

The marketization of teaching itself is also a problem. Teachers and educators can earn additional salary by offering expensive after-hours tutoring sessions to students who can afford to pay—leading to a stream of corruption within ostensibly “egalitarian” school systems (Zhang 2014; Matsuoka 2018). The degradation of quality in state school systems is also cause for concern, when this directly affects less well-off students and their educational outcomes. After all, shadow tutoring confers the greatest benefits to those who can afford it, which creates a massive tension. Mainstream teachers receive good payment for private tutoring, and thus pay more attention and offer more resources to well-off students, while rural and poorer students need more attention but cannot afford the resources required to improve (Zhang, 2017). In addition, diminished funding to rural state schools drives teachers to wealthier urban centers (Fu & Ren, 2010), thus depriving poor students further and creating more barriers to accessing education and decent work.

Attention to the growth and expansion of education systems is being complemented and sometimes even replaced by a growing concern for the quality of the entire educational process and for the control of its results.

 –Jacques Hallak, UNESCO

But families who cannot afford to relocate to wealthier urban centers or gain access to quality private tutoring are locked out of this system. Shadow education, and the economics that influence enrollment in it, are in flagrant opposition to the intention of universal quality education, and have important impacts on social mobility in China (Zhang, Li, & Xue, 2015). It is in the interest of equitable, quality education and employment outcomes—and future economic growth—to break down the barriers that are rising, veritably unchecked, between the disadvantaged and higher education. This includes a reassessment of how rural schools are funded and whether or not the hukou system is more of a detriment to economic growth than a method of curbing massive migration to urban centers.

[1] UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals include Goal 4: Quality Education, Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities.

[2] A rural hukou prevents those who hold it from moving to urban centers and accessing the services provided there (and vice versa). For more information on the hukou system, Dr. Fei-Ling Wang of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs writes extensively on this topic. The Diplomat interviewed him in 2017.

[3] There are multiple decades of research contributing to this topic, but China is a more recent area of interest. Previous efforts have focused on Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in particular and have informed the basis of this piece.

References and Works Cited

Fu, Q., & Ren, Q. (2010). Educational Inequality under Chinas Rural–Urban Divide: The Hukou System and Return to Education. Environment and Planning A, 42(3), 592-610. doi:10.1068/a42101

Gao, H. (2014, September 10). China’s Education Gap. Retrieved October 5, 2018, from https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20140910/c10gao/en-us/

Knoll, J. H. (1992). UNESCO (Hg.): World Education Report 1991. Paris: UNESCO, 1991 (149 S.). Internationales Jahrbuch Der Erwachsenenbildung, 19-20(1). doi:10.7788/ijbe.1992.1920.1.229

Li, Ran, “Shadow Education in China: What is the relationship between private tutoring and students’ National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) Performance?” (2016). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 15754. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15754

Liqing Tao, Margaret Berci and Wayne He. (2006, March 23). Education as a Social Ladder. Retrieved October 5, 2018, from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/college/coll-china-education-004.html

Matsuoka, R. (2018). Inequality in Shadow Education Participation in an Egalitarian Compulsory Education System. Comparative Education Review, 000-000. doi:10.1086/699831

Yanbi, H., & Minhui, Q. (2010). Educational and Social Stratification in China: Ethnicity, Class, and Gender. Chinese Education & Society, 43(5), 3-9. doi:10.2753/ced1061-1932430500

Zhang, D., Li, X., & Xue, J. (2015). Education Inequality between Rural and Urban Areas of the Peoples Republic of China, Migrants’ Children Education, and Some Implications. Asian Development Review,32(1), 196-224. doi:10.1162/adev_a_00042

Zhang, J. (2017, July 07). The lie of equal opportunity in a fast-growing China. Retrieved October 5, 2018, from https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2101654/china-grows-equal-opportunity-and-social-mobility-are-fast

Zhang, W. (2014). The demand for shadow education in China: mainstream teachers and power relations. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 34(4), 436-454. doi:10.1080/02188791.2014.960798

Zhang, W., & Bray, M. (2016). Shadow Education. Spotlight on China, 85-99. doi:10.1007/978-94-6209-881-7_6

Zhang, W., & Bray, M. (2017). Equalising schooling, unequalising private supplementary tutoring: Access and tracking through shadow education in China. Oxford Review of Education, 44(2), 221-238. doi:10.1080/03054985.2017.1389710

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