| Since the1980s, Chinese compulsory education and its funding have developed rapidly.Meanwhile, the reform of the finance framework of compulsory education is also beingdeepen and improved continuously, and we have established a more reasonable institutionalfinance framework of compulsory education. However, there’re a series of problems ofcurrent compulsory education finance for us to face. In the rural area, there’re still problemsof compulsory education with a lower level, poor quality, imperfect systems, inadequateinvestments, increasingly widened gap between the urban and rural areas. Especially, there isobvious difference in such aspects as financial investments, infrastructure conditions, facultyand education opportunities. The unbalanced development of the urban-rural education willeventually lead to adverse consequences. After discussions from aspects of facts and reasonsfor the unbalance among Chinese theoretical circle, people generally believe that theunreasonable fiscal decentralization system is the cause for such disparity. Under the system,there’s no clear division of governments’ responsibility at all levels for compulsory education.As regard to how to divide and how to shoulder the responsibility between the central andprovincial governments, we still endeavour to improve. In this paper, the author aims to putforward proper ways to perfect the fiscal decentralization system, promote the balanceddevelopment of compulsory education, and ultimately to propel the realization of educationequality. At the beginning, the author defines the connotation features of public goods of thecompulsory education, systematically studies the change traits of Chinese financial systemand compulsory education by analysis means of Institutional economics, then empiricallyanalyzes relationship between degrees of fiscal decentralization and the urban-ruralcompulsory education balance with econometric tools of regression analysis, panal dataanalysis, DEA-Malmquist index and Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Lastly, the author uses thesuccessful experiences in foreign balanced compulsory education as a reference to study howto reform the financial system in China to promote balanced education development. Detailsare as follows:1. The paper will be written on the basis of fiscal decentralization theory. In it, the authorformulated the stages of the theory development and evaluated the research status of compulsory education fiscal framework at home and abroad from aspects of the investmentsources, transfer payment system, equality and efficiency of fiscal expenditure. In future, wemust consider the education and economy together to research how to allocate resources ofcompulsory education more efficently, how to reasonably decentralize the governments’responsibility, how to narrow the urban-rural gap to realize the reform and innovation offiscal decentralization, which will be the primary project to face.2. This paper is based on the attributes of public goods compulsory education. It’s knownthat different public products are provided by governments at all levels with differentresponsibility. The author argues that, in present China the nature of compulsory educationpublic goods in urban-rural areas should be defined respectively. The urban compulsoryeducation can be defined as quasi-public good swith diversified financing modes and channels.Whereas, the rural compulsory education should be the pure public goods with funds providedby govenments and in different areas, and there’s different investment liability forgovernments at the level of provinces, cities and counties. If we give priority to the ruralcompulsory education with the concentrated wealth and resources, the gap will be graduallyclosed.3. After keeping the track of the Chinese financial system from the stage of centralizationto decentralization, we find the transition is domonated by governments, mandatory andgradual, synchronized with the evolution of compulsory education. Due to the dependence ofinstitutional transition, the current financial system of tax-distribution has kept most of the oldone and operated with low efficiency within the old framework, undoubtedly adding the costand obstacle of institutional innovation.Thus, our current fiscal decentralization is known asthe "Chinese style decentralization", which is trapped in the vicious cycle of decentralization-centralization-reincarnation". For this, we’ve always sought the proper ally betweencentralization and decentralization. The financial system of Chinese compulsory educationwithin the framework is still adjusted. However, the government’s willingness and abilityalways direct changes of compulsory education financial system. The central governmentimproperly delegates the education spending to grassroots governments without clear divisionof duty and authority for the lower governments, which results in grass-roots government’sincreased financial burden, lack of funds, serious shortage of supply for the compulsory education. And the rural compulsory education stays at the state of the absence of government,lack of fiscal support. Compared with the urban’s education, there is a large gap in ruraleducation resources and conditions. Therefore, we should clearly divide governments’ dutyand responsibility, properly shoulder the major spending responsibility to promote thebalanced development of rural compulsory education.4. Empirical analysis is the body of this paper. The empirical sdudies have shown thatfiscal decentralization have a significant influence on balancing the urban-rural compulsoryeducation. In Chapter4, the author designs and calculates the1995-2010fiscaldecentralization degree index and the compulsory education balanced degree index,including the central government and provincial financial indexes, with30provinces’ annualindexes. First of all, panel data regression analysis revealed that the degree of fiscaldecentralization between the central and provincial governments are more regular than lowergovernments’, and also related positively with urban-rural compulsory education balancing.Provincially, fiscal decentralization and urban-rural compulsory education balancing arerelated negatively, namely the higher the provincial fiscal decentralization degree is, the moreimbalanced the urban-rural compulsory education becomes. We can conclude that financialsupport for rural compulsory education mainly relies on the standard fiscal decentralization oflower city and county governments.Secondly, the performance analysis through DEA model and Malmquist Index haveshown that in which year the ralationship was the most coordinated between the two,and howto carry out the separation of powers between the central-province in order to better promotebalanced compulsory education; Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and the R softwareto do the inter-provincial data processing and spatial econometric analysis, and depicted onthe map the fiscal Decentralization performance of the30provinces and autonomous regionsto do a comparative analysis, and summarized high, medium and low regions of compulsoryeducation decentralization performance, which make policy recommendations accordingly.5. Drawing lessons from the major policy and experience of compulsory education indeveloped and other developing countries, the author argues that we should increase input inrural elementary education, widen the compulsory education funds collecting channels anddiversify the sources, guarantee rural teachers’ salary with a policy of central and provincial government directly responsible for teachers’ salaries in poverty-striken areas, handle therelationship between the balance and gap with the establishment of dynamic balance systemof urban-rural compulsory education, perfect the legal system to guarantee the reasonabledistribution of education investment and education spending.6. This paper is based on the fiscal decentralization system innovation and aims to giveadvice on the promotion of balancing urban-rural compulsory education. Firstly, we shouldinnovate the fiscal decentralization system and set an effective incentive mechanism toreasonably define of fiscal and responsibility division between governments, solving theproblem of "absence" of the central finance; refactor fiscal relations between localgovernments and optimize the government finance classes; build education fiscal transferpayment. Secondly, we should innovate the public budget system to guarantee the supervisionand restriction and establish an independent public performance budgeting system ofcompulsory education, to assure mandatory constraints education funds. Thirdly, we shouldestablish a reasonable government performance appraisal system for education expenditure,the evaluation system of balanced compulsory education and improve the system ofsupervision, auditing, incentive mechanism. |
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