A Study On The Policy Tools Of The Reform And Development Of Compulsory Education

The eduation becomes an increasing important issue in the trend of constructing of a service-oriented government and improving the public service system. Compulsory education serves as the pinnacle of the education development and reform, the balance and effiency of its development is directly related to the construction and development of the public service system. Compulsory education policy, which gurantees the development of the compulsory education, is an important part in the research of compulsory education. Policy instrument, made by policy practitioners, is the mechanism to achieve the target, solve the problem and implement the plan of the policies in certain background. By employing the literature analysis, textual analysis and comparative analysis, the thesis uses the theory of policy instrument to analyze the documents of China’s compulsory education reform and development in the view of time and space.From the perspective of time, this thesis analyzes the evolutionary process of China’s compulsory education policy instruments. The development of compulsory education in China has experienced three stages---the stage of advocating the fairness and efficiency (1949-1978), the stage of priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness (1978-2000), and the stage of balanced development (after2000). At each stage, this thesis introduces the voluntary, compulsory and mixed policy instruments, and analyzes the basic situation, development process and achievements and problems of compulsory education. The conclusions are:(1) At the first stage, the voluntary and mixed policy instruments are not widely used, while the compulsory instruments mainly focuse on the rule adjustment and instruction. It indicates the lack of application on policy instruments in China’s compulsory education.(2) At the second stage, all three instruments are used adequately, with the extension in quantity and scope. It investigates the growth and diversification of policy instruments in China’s compulsory education. (3) At the third stage, the number of three instruments rises at first and then declines. After the rapid growth, the policy instruments in China’s compulsory education now have become matural.From the perspective of space, this thesis analyzes the national and provincal medium-and-long-term plan plans of China for compulsory education reform and development. The thesis compares four type plans, including the national plan, the provincial plans set up on the same period, the provincial plans with reference, and the provincial plans for implementation. Then the thesis investigates the inheritance relationship between the associated plans, and concludes that:(1) The national plan covers the common parts of the provincial plans set up on the same period; meanwhile, it takes some creative policy instruments from theirs.(2) The provinces which refer to the national plan set up their plans of the compulsory education policy instruments on the base of the national plan; at the same time, they also make some adjustment according to their local conditions.(3) The provinces which focus on the implementation select some important policy instruments to carry on from the national plan of compulsory education.Based on the analysis above, the thesis concludes that the government has already employed the voluntary, compulsory and mixed policy instruments. In the view of time, the voluntary instruments are expanding; the compulsory instruments are the most widely used and become dominant; and the mixed instruments have a steady improvement. In the view of space, the policy instruments of compulsory education for different arear have mutual links:on one hand, they are in common in the main body and framework; on the other hand, they have their individual architectures according to their own conditions.At the same time, there are some problems in China’s compulsory education policy instruments. The compulsory instrument still mainly focuses on rule-regulations. Though the government has gradually introduced imperative and authoritative instruments, they are far from enough. There is lack of the mixed instruments except for encouraging and direct subsidies. Although the voluntary instruments are involved in family and community, volunteer organization, market, management and service, its frequency of usage is low.In order to speed up the development of compulsory education in the new stage, and to provide the more suitable policies for education, the advices for better use of the policy instruments are proposed for the government. They should expand the range of application of the policy instruments to promote the balanced development for compulsory education; they also should make the classification and integratation for the use of policy instruments in order to achieve the best performance of the policies.