Overview Education in the People's Republic of China is a state-run public education system run by the Ministry of Education. All citizens must attend school for at least nine years. The government provides primary education for six years, starting at age six or seven, followed by six years of secondary education for ages 12 to 18. Some provinces may have five years of primary school but four years of middle school. There are three years of middle school and three years of high school. The Ministry of Education reported a 99% attendance rate for primary school and an 80 % rate for both primary and middle schools. In 1985, the government abolished tax-funded higher education, requiring university applicants to compete for scholarships based on academic ability. In the early 1980s, the government allowed the establishment of the first private schools.

China has had a significant expansion in education, increasing the number of undergraduates and people who hold doctoral degrees fivefold in 10 years. In 2003 China supported 1,552 institutions of higher learning (colleges and universities) and their 725,000 professors and 11 million students. There are over 100 critical national universities, including Beijing University and Tsinghua University. In 2002, the literacy rate in China was 90.8%, 95.1% of males and 86.5% of females. Laws regulating the education system include the Regulation on Academic Degrees, the Compulsory Education Law, the Teachers Law, the Education Law, the Law on Vocational Education, and the Law on Higher Education. Reform in the 21st Century Two years before the dawn of the 21st Century, the Chinese government proposed an ambitious plan to expand university enrollment to ensure a greater output of professional and specialized graduates. An adjunct to the program aimed to develop an elite of world-class universities.

Through consolidations, mergers, and shifts among the authorities which supervise institutions, restructuring was aimed at addressing the problems of small size and low efficiency. Higher vocational education was also restructured, and there was a general tendency to emphasize elite institutions. This rapid expansion of mass higher education has resulted in a strain on teaching resources and higher unemployment rates among graduates. The creation of private universities not under governmental control remains slow, and its future is still being determined. The restructuring of higher education, in the words of one academic, "has created a clearly escalating social stratification pattern among institutions, stratified by geography, source of funding, administrative unit, as well as by functional category (e.g., comprehensive, law, medical, etc.)." Thus, although recent reform has arguably improved overall educational quality, they have created new, different issues of equity and efficiency that will need to be addressed as the century proceeds. In the spring of 2007, China will conduct a national evaluation of its universities. The results of this evaluation will be used to support the next major planned policy initiative. The last substantial national universities assessment, undertaken in 1994, resulted in the 'massification' of higher education and a renewed emphasis on elite institutions. Academics praised the fin du siècle reforms for budging China's higher education from a unified, centralized, closed, and static system into one characterized by more diversification, decentralization, openness, and dynamism, stimulating the involvement of local governments and other non-state sectors. At the same time they note that this decentralization and marketization have led to further inequality in educational opportunities. Chinese parents and employers have begun to place a high value on overseas education, especially at top American and European institutions such as Harvard University, Oxford University, and Cambridge University, which are "revered" among many middle-class parents. Since 1999, the number of Chinese applicants to top schools overseas has increased tenfold. Much of the interest in overseas schools has been attributed to the release of how-to parenting books such as Harvard Girl, which spawned a "national obsession" with admissions to overseas schools.

Literacy and language reform the continuing campaigns to eradicate illiteracy also was a part of primary education. Chinese government statistics indicated that of a total population of nearly 1.1 billion in 1985, about 230 million people were illiterate or semiliterate. The difficulty of mastering written Chinese makes raising the literacy rate particularly difficult. In general, language reform was intended to make written and spoken Chinese easier to learn, which would foster literacy and linguistic unity and serve as a foundation for a more straightforward written language. In 1951 the party issued a directive that inaugurated a three-part plan for language reform. The goal sought to establish universal comprehension of a standardized common language, simplify written characters, and introduce, where possible, romanized forms based on the Latin alphabet. In 1956 Putonghua (Modern Standard Mandarin) was introduced as the language of instruction in schools and in the national broadcast media. By 1977 it was in use throughout China, particularly in the government and party, and in education. Although in 1987, the government continued to endorse the goal of universalizing Putonghua, hundreds of regional and local dialects continued to be spoken, complicating interregional communication. A second language reform required the simplification of ideographs because ideographs with fewer strokes are easier to learn. In 1964 the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language released an official list of 2,238 simplified characters that were most basic to the language.

Simplification made literacy easier, although people taught only in simplified characters were cut off from the wealth of Chinese literature written in traditional characters. However, government and education leaders soon abandoned replacing the ideographic script with the Romanized hand. A third area of change involved the proposal to use the pinyin romanization system more widely. Pinyin (first approved by the National People's Congress in 1958) was encouraged to facilitate the spread of putonghua in regions where other dialects and languages are spoken. By the mid-1980s, however, the use of pinyin was less widespread than the use of putonghua. Retaining literacy was as much a problem as acquiring it, particularly among the rural population. Literacy rates declined between 1966 and 1976. The political disorder may have contributed to the decline. Still, the fundamental problem was that many Chinese ideographs can be mastered only through rote learning and can often be forgotten because of disuse.

Chinese Education System: Please take your attention for a moment. I want to give your an introduction to the Chinese education system. Now, first of all, I'd like to talk about primary school. In China, Children begin to go to school at seven, and it takes them six years to finish primary school. During this stage, they are taught elementary knowledge in language and science, for example, mathematics, basic Chinese, English, nature, music, gym, drawing, and so on. Now, I'd like to make mention about junior middle school. After primary school, the students will go to junior middle school without having to pass the exam.

Education at this level is compulsory; junior middle school education lasts for three years. They learn many subjects, such as Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, geography, history, etc. Turning now to senior middle school. When junior middle school education ends, the students are screened by exam in two ways. Some students expect to enter college; they enter senior middle school. The others want to work; they attend professional school. For senior middle school students, it takes three years. For experienced school students, it takes them two to three years.

Regarding college, senior middle school graduates have to pass competitive exams before they enter college. A college education takes 4 to 10 years. For a Bachelor's degree, students take a three-year course and pass the thesis defense. For a Master's degree, students take another two-year study and research and get a degree after the security of the view. For a Doctor degree, students continue to take another four-year study and research and get a degree after the protection of the idea. I am happy to introduce you to the Chinese education system, and I hope you have found it a happy and productive time. 

My View On Chinese Education System Chinese education system is totally different from the American education system. Because of the large population in China, the education system emphasizes the grade of students. The more popular the major is, the higher the required quality is. However, students in America can choose their major mainly depending on their interests. There are also lots of competition in China. Students need to take tutorial classes and learn further knowledge ahead of time; otherwise, they can not get better grades than others and will be blamed.

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