| The social demand for education, especially the demand for high-quality education, has been growing tremendously with the improvement of public literacyand numerous changes to elementary education. The gap between the education demand and our limited investments in education is getting more and more serious. Given the global trend of pursuing sustainable development, it is not appropriate any more to continue the extensive development model of low-quality, low standard and low performance education.Since the reform and opening-up, the elementary and middle schools in most provinces across the country have experienced reforms of expansion, contraction and adjustment. These reforms contributed significantly to the social and economic development, and established good foundations to implement the strategy of "Two Bases", "Two Comprehensivenesses" so as to promote quality education in a wide range. At the same time, we must be fully aware of many difficulties and problems in practice. Because countryside schools are small in scale and scattered in terms of location, it is difficult to consolidate educational resources, optimize teacher allocations, offer courses of music, physical education and fine arts, or to improve the school facilities and education qualities. It is even more difficult to have English courses in primary schools or information technology courses in primary and middle schools. To meet the new requirements of course changes and countryside tax and fee reforms, it now becomes necessary and crucial to adjust the distribution of countryside primary and middle schools.The distribution adjustment of countryside primary and middle schools does not just represent simple closures or combinations of some primary and middle schools, or allocations and decreases of some teachers. Through the adjustments, we aim to increase the scale of countryside primary and middle schools, improve their facilities, optimize the teacher resources, increase the quality, upgrade the overall countryside education, improve its quality and performance, and raise the standard of quality education in the countryside schools. Meanwhile, we also need to realize that education investments must be guaranteed in order to develop quality education,increase schools scales, raise the standard and improve the quality. We must fight relentlessly against the tendency that "school adjustments equal to decreases of financial input into education".In this research paper we try to discuss, with both theoretical and practical evidences, the intensive development model of countryside education that will be appropriate in the current situation of our country. We will also discuss how to decide the right direction of education investments after meeting the "two foundation" standard, optimize and make good use of existing educational resources, increase social and economical benefits of education inputs, improve the overall countryside education and its quality and performance, and enhance the implementation of quality education in the countryside.In the first part of this paper, we explain that it is crucial to adjust the distribution of countryside primary and middle schools, based on analyses of the position of countryside education, the problems, especially those problems for countryside education after China's entry into WTO, and impacts of countryside tax and fee reforms.The second part of the paper explains the necessity, urgency and feasibility of distribution adjustments through analyzing the current situation and problems of primary and middle school education in Huoqiu County, Anhui Province.The third part discusses the strategy of adjusting countryside school distribution, including the targets, principles and methods of implementation. The distribution adjustments of countryside schools ask for investments of many parties and also involve some personnel changes. A few suggestions on financing the investments and personnel reforms are also included in the actions of adjusting countryside schools, which is the fo... |
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