On The Equalizational Provision Of Urban-Rural Primary Education

As the human society and civilization continue to make progress, the primary education gradually shows its great importance to the social and economic development. Providing the free, equal and unified primary education to all the citizens so as to guarantee each people's opportunity to take the free and unified primary education no matter what his economic and political condition, will be crucial important not only to better the society's equal condition, but also to improve the whole society's human quality and increase the economic and society development. So the primary education equalization is the inherent requirement of the public and democratic finance, as well as the important duty of modern nations.But Chinese primary education has experienced an unfree, unequal and un-unified road before the new Law of Forced Education was brought into effect on September 1st 2006. As the household registration institution separated the society into country and city, and each has a different primary education administration institution, so the urban-rural difference in the primary education has been very large since a long time. Firstly, the nine-year forced education task has already been implemented in the cities, and now many cities even put forward the twelve-year or the fifteen-year education, but the nine-year task is still not fully achieved in the country. Even if some country areas have already got the nine-year goal, the criterion is very low and the outcome is very frangible. Secondly, from the point of finance, the primary education in the cities is fully born by the public finance, while in the country areas the peasants will have to take on some responsibility, which is called the peasants running the rural education. Thirdly, the rural education's conditions are much worse than the city, and some poor schools in the rural areas even don't have the least conditions of running school. Lastly, the children of the shifting population, especially the migrant workers don't have the guaranteed chance to go to school. Since these children can hard go to the nearby public schools, they have to go to the schools for the migrant workers' children with bad conditions, or go home to become the left behind children, or wander with their parents in the city to become the new illiteracy.It is these shocking differences that urge the author to investigate Chinese urban and rural primary education development. Through this study, the author hopes to make clear the urban-rural difference condition, the degree, the causes and the effects, and also to find the urban-rural equalization in the primary education under the guideline of public goods equalization theory on the base of these differences. So this study will do good not only to guide Chinese urban-rural equalization in the primary education, but also to enrich and develop the related public goods equalization theory.This article combines the normal analysis and empirical analysis. The basic idea is as follows: the author first analyzes the public goods equalization theory, then the Chinese urban-rural primary education difference, and put forward the equalization suggestions in the end.Under the above idea, this article has 7 chapters, which are organized as follows.Chapter 1 is the "introduction", which mainly introduces this subject's source, the main definitions, the organization and the main innovative points and shortcomings. Chapter 2 is the "literature reviews", which includes the literatures on the public goods difference, public goods equalization, Chinese urban-rural difference and the perfecting suggestions of primary education. Chapter 3-7 is the main body of this article. Chapter 3 "the basic theoretic analysis on public goods equalization" is the basis of this study, which analyzes the definition and means of public equalization on the base of the public goods' equality and difference. Chapter 4 "the empirical analysis of urban-rural differences in primary education" systematically investigates the current difference from the point of finance institution, the availability and the running conditions. Chapter 5 "the institutional source of the urban-rural differences" studies the household registration institution and primary education administration institution, and then introduces a political economy interpretation of these urban bias phenomena. Chapter 6 "the effects of urban-rural differences" mainly analyzes the human capital stock effect, income distribution effect and the social floating effect. Chapter 7 "the institutional innovation of urban-rural equalization" put forwards the basic principles of equalization, designs and computes the new "central government role" primary education administration institution on the base of criticizing the shortcoming of the "county governments role", and suggests the related institutional reforms in the end.The main innovative points are as follows.1. The equality, difference and equalization of public goods. Equality is one of the basic inherent characters, but the existence of local public goods and the dispersive provision institutions lead to the demand and supply difference of public goods. Equalization is the necessary choice to solve the difference and guarantee the equality. The equalization doesn't mean the equal consumption, but the equal consumption opportunity; also it isn't the average distribution, but permits the regional difference beyond the national's level; and the content and the criterion of the equalization will change as the people's attitude to the equity and the circumstance change.2. The ways of public goods equalization. There are three ways. One is the revenue way, which mainly refers to the intergovernmental grants so as to make the fiscal revenue equalized with no change of the provision institution. Another is the expenditure way, which changes the provision institution and put the public goods responsibility to the higher governments or the central government. The third is the political way, which means merging the local governments in order to equalize the public goods in a larger area.3. The institutional sources of the urban-rural difference in primary education. The difference stems from the urban bias institutions. The household registration institution separates the city from the country, resulting into the dualistic structure in Chinese society, and the concomitant education welfare policy leads to the unfair jumping-off point between the urban and rural people. The primary education administration institution of local responsibility and hierarchical administration omits the public goods attribute and the large externality, and solidifies the principle of "whoever runs school should finance", so the urban-rural differences of economy development and fiscal revenue will inevitably reflect in the primary education development.4. The effects of urban-rural difference in primary education. First is the human capital stock effect. The analysis shows that the urban-rural difference of outlay per student does have significant effect on the enrollment ratios, and also this human capital stock difference has some regional character since the different region has different economic development and fiscal revenue ability. The second is the income distribution effect. The regression analysis shows that the urban-rural difference in primary education does have significant positive effect on the urban-rural income gap, and this gap has negative relation with the urban-rural labor quantity ratio, and positive relation with the tertiary industry's ratio. The third is the social floating effect. The primary education difference makes the formal channel to the primary labor market becoming narrow, and most peasants have to go to the second labor markets.5. The principles of urban-rural equalization in primary education. There are three points: the opportunity of getting the free primary education is equal; the basic school conditions are the same all across the country; and the regional differences beyond the national level are permitted.6. The "central government role"primary education administration institution. From the view of the equalization, Chinese primary education should reform the institution, using both the central government's advantage in the equalizing ability and abundant fiscal revenue, and the local governments' in information and efficiency. The author designs a new administration institution, that is "separated provision and production; input mainly from central government; macro-administration responsibility in provincial governments, and micro-administration in county governments". Specifically, the author decomposes the basic conditions into the different educational outlays, denoted by the outlay per student. The basic allocating principle is as follows: the personnel outlay is born by the central government, public outlay by provincial governments, and capital construction outlay by county governments. Considering the different fiscal revenue abilities, the responsibility is also shared between two levels in the second region and the third region.7. The computation of the new "central government role" institution. The author computes the outlay per student is 1200 Yuan for the elementary school and 1500 Yuan for the junior school on the base of investigation and other scholars' research. Under the "central government role" institution, the different governments' responsibilities in primary education present the converse pyramid structure, that is, the central, provincial and county governments' ratios reduce level by level, and the central government bears the biggest ratio, 73.28%, the provincial is less, 20.2%, and the county government is the least, 5.80%. This trend is corresponding to the fiscal revenue structure between different governments.