The Institutional Tracing And Reform Of The Disparity Of China’s Compulsory Education

The disparity of resource allocation in different schools of China’s compulsory education has experienced two different stages--continuous reduction after China’s founding and increased expansion since reform and opening-up. By teasing out the conditions of the disparity of compulsory education in different periods since reform and opening-up, we can find that during the period of "Three-tier Education", from1978to2001, the regional gap, urban-rural disparity and inter-school differences have expanded to a incommensurable degree; Although the government has adopted the adjusting system of "mainly rely on county" since2001, this problem has not been solved efficiently and even become worse. Funds grantee mechanism of rural compulsory education adopted since2006also do not improve the condition obviously. The serious situation of the disparity still keeps worse and causes some bad effects and harms to social development. They threaten social fairness and justice, influence social harmony and stability, promote exam-oriented education and school-choosing hot, decrease the overall efficiency of the educational resources allocation and, to some extent, hinder the rapid development and structural optimization of national economy for the vicious circle with economical disparity. Therefore, it is imperative to narrow and vanish the disparity for the development of compulsory education.The disparity of compulsory education stems from the institutions of compulsory education which origin from economization of transaction costs and is virtually a transaction contract or a Game rule to decrease transaction costs and adjust human’s behaviors. Balanced development, as the inevitable demand to reduce transaction costs of compulsory education, has become significant contact aims of the institutions of modern schools and common orientation of international compulsory education. Therefore, the disparity is a typical institutional paradox and is virtually a problem about institutional performance. Based on it, we put forward a studying assumption about this problem and make sure that the problems about the formal institution, informal institution and relative institutional transition in the investment of compulsory education and resource allocation are the studying contents, and choose relative theories of new institutional economics as the analyzing tools.About formal institution, by using principal-agent theory, investigating reality and analyzing the investment system of compulsory education within budget, we can find that there not only exits some principal-agent problems like asymmetric information, inconsistent objective function and incomplete contract exit in the structure of investment and management system of China’s compulsory education, but also many special problems like the original principals are virtual, absent and vulnerable,agent’s market is insufficient, the agent’s levels are multiple and the chain is long, the paradox of identity is overlapped and the right and responsibility is wrong. All these problems leal to and expand the disparity of China’s compulsory education, which is mainly about that first, the adverse selection of investment agent leads to not only investors’ layer-by-layer drilling and the disparity of regional education, but also the principal-agent relation of urban-rural dual structure in the investment system of compulsory education and the large disparity in urban-rural education. At the same time, the agent’s adverse selection like the "face-saving project" also leads to the incommensurable disparity of inter-school education. Second, the moral hazard is mainly about arbitrary education charges, wage deduction and default on teachers’ welfare and the delays of paying education fund, all these investment shirking behaviors lead to insufficient investment of rural compulsory education and increased expansion of the disparity in urban-rural education. The problems of rights rent-seeking about funds collection and teachers allocation also contribute to the expansion of the disparity of compulsory education. Third, the behaviors of agent collusion like that encroaching and appropriating education funds and the percentage of project funds lead to the un-implementation of educational funds which should have been used to support and improve the conditions of rural and weak schools. Forth, according to some ways of information forgery about data, some schools get more educational resources and extra non-pecuniary compensation. These agent control problems make the conditions of weak schools improved difficultly and intensify the extent of educational disparity.After analyzing the problems of investment system within the budget of compulsory education, it is necessary to have a further analysis of the problems about extra-budgetary education funds and teachers allocation from the perspective of property rights and the influence of these problems about formal institution to educational disparity. Theoretically, educational institution is virtually a kind of special enterprise, therefore, educational property rights not only include ownerships of property, rights of possession, income rights and rights of disposal which are owned by the clients of all walks of life like organizations and individuals, but also include residual-control rights and residual-claim rights. The public-goods attribute of compulsory education determines that only the state-owned property rights purchased by government can be implemented by compulsory education. Resources of compulsory education include cash operating profits, the extra-budgetary funds and teachers, which should be implemented by government’s overall allocation not by market allocation. In order to optimize the arrangement of the property rights of compulsory education, it necessary to enforce no-profit sharing system of surplus and share residual-control rights and residual-claim rights jointly and symmetrically for all the clients.Property rights system determines the conditions of resources allocation. According to theoretical analysis and researches of reality, we can find that property rights system of extra-budgetary funds and human capitals about compulsory education has greatly contribute to the disparity of compulsory education, which is mainly about that first, the absence of residual-claim rights of educational institution and agents results in the momentum loss of balanced allocation of educational resources; Second, the dislocation of residual-control rights of educational institution leads to the extra-budgetary educational funds lacking government’s overall allocation and the expansion of disparity of inter-school education; Third, the fallacy of residual-claim rights and the disorder of residual-control rights of teachers’human capitals both lead to the unbalance of allocation of teachers.Institution, as the principles to control and restrain human’s behaviors, includes formal institution and informal institution. The informal institution is a kind of social norm which hasn’t been ensured or enforced by formal organizations or in written way, which includes ideological theory, value and belief, moral belief, manner and customs, and cultural traditions. Connecting with formal institution, they are mutually dependent, complementary and effected. They jointly determine the allocating conditions of social resources. Formal institution, distinguished from market and project, is the third hand which is different from the "another visible hand of market" and still plays an important role in non-marker allocation area of compulsory education resources. Interviews, questionnaire surveys and statistical analysis show that some unreasonable factors of informal institution also lead to increased expansion of the disparity. The function of these factors to the expansion of the disparity can be ranked as follows:views on disparity development, exam-oriented education, traditions of key schools, cultures of centralized power, ridden rules, inter-personal relationships, money worships, selfish departmentalism, professional beliefs and professional ethnics, etc. There are four dimensions corresponding to them respectively, which are ideology, conventions, moral beliefs and cultural traditions whose influence to financial resource allocation and teacher-resources allocation has reached an obvious level. The trend of these four dimensions to financial resources and human capitals are basically same with their affections to the disparity of educational general resources, it shows that ideology>convention>cultural tradition> moral belief. Typically, ridden rules, selfish departmentalism and views of disparity whose affections to the allocation of teachers are obvious higher than their affections to the disparity of financial resource allocation.According to the theory of institutional transition and by taking analytical method which is commonly used in the history of new economics to have a further analysis of the continuous evolution of the disparity of China’s compulsory education and the institutional transition behind governance, we can find that since reform and opening-up, social economic environment, government decisions, interests Game and culture consciousness have been the major factors to determine and constrain the institutional transition. Currently, the institution, to some extent, faces some transitional dilemmas such as "Nash equilibrium","Interests Game" and "path dependence" and also faces the opportunities of institutional transition brought about by the changes of external social economic situations and the strength contrast of central government, policy changes and Game pattern.Therefore, in order to govern the problems of the disparity,it is necessary to break down the dilemmas of institutional transition, we can do as follows: keep the directions of decision-makers’profits and the profits of institutional transition same, improve the enforcement of central government to institutional transition so as to break down the interests Game pattern. Second, strengthen the learning mechanism about balanced development and technology and reach an agreement between local government and social public. Third, choose a proper way of institutional transition and implement a forcing type, active type, partial type and gradual model transition.About the problems of institution on resources allocation of compulsory education, there are some relative revolutions. Firstly, to the principal-agent problems in the investment system of compulsory education, it is necessary to, first, restore the status of central government as a investment client and make central government overall plan the collection and allocation of compulsory education resources; second, adjust investment agents, execute the institution of "mainly rely on province" and "county administrated by province" as the management institution of compulsory education and promote the level of investment agents up to the level of provincial government; third, decrease the level of the agents, set up a scientific and united standard of resources allocation and index system of balanced development, perfect the information disclosure system of equilibrium and set up a sound agent decision-participating system to promote the smooth condition of information and the conditions of information asymmetry; forth, make the conditions of compulsory education investment and resources allocation as important indicators of the achievements inspection of relative governments, receive supervision and implement the system of "reward good performance and punish poor outcomes" to improve spiriting and restricting system by information disclosure. Secondly, to the problems of property rights, it is necessary to first, give the residual-claim rights and residual-control rights back to the education administrative institution and incorporate the operating revenue of schools into the extent of authority under government’s overall allocation; second, strengthen and implement the financing aid of allowance subsidies and perfect the residual-claim rights system of teacher human capitals; third, adjust each subject’s control right about teachers’human capitals and execute recruitment system and regularly flow system by administrative department of local education. Thirdly, reconstruct the informal institution that effects the resources allocation of China’s compulsory education and promote the collaborative transition between formal institution and informal institution. First, strengthen the propaganda of right consciousness and set up views of balanced development about compulsory education; second, strengthen working communication among staff members of education and the spirit guidance and then rebuild educators’professional ethics and beliefs; third, strengthen the orientation of formal institution and law enforcement to promote the transition of informal institution. All in all, to govern the problems of the disparity, the key is to break down the dilemmas of institutional transition, the basic path is to improve the principal-agent relations in the investment system of compulsory education, an important path is to reform the property rights, the difficulty is to reconstruct the informal institution.