Policy Study On School Consolidation Of Compulsory Education

In the late1990s, with the development of urbanization, the mobility of Chinese rural population and the change of school-age population during the period of compulsory education, a new round of school consolidation,which is an important education policy and reform measure, and closely related to students’, parents’, teachers’ and communities’interest began. In essence, it’s the adjustment of social interest. From this policy’s beginning, great improvements have been brought changes about school distribution and education quality. However, many social problems and conflicts have also been exposed. Especially in rural areas, because of the excessive concentration of education resources and closure of schools, problems such as a long journey to school, hardness to school and high expenditure emerge, which have caused a great attention of society from all circles. In order to reflect the advantages and disadvantages of school consolidation deeply, knowing about the needs and preferences of the related groups is an important issue in policy research of compulsory education schools’consolidation.Teachers are public intellectuals, whose perspectives of school consolidation focused questions such as small schools, boarding schools, criterions of school closure and moderate scale and so on are important for public policy making. Meanwhile, teachers are the crucial stakeholder, because as numerous teachers experiencing the whole procedure of the innovation of school consolidation, they may shift, or transferring jobs, even be dismissed passively due to school consolidation. Also, they may acquire more opportunity of professional development owing to school consolidation. If lacks the content of the teacher group, it will be a great regret to school consolidation policy research. Owing to the above-mentioned purpose, this thesis selects the rural teacher as the research object, adopt the qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the teachers’opinion, which may give some references to the policy making and implement.The structure of thesis is that:The introduction brings up the research questions, confirming the direction, content and method of the research through literature review. The second part describes the sample, show the character of teacher group. The third part mirrors the school consolidation from the teacher’s respect. In this part, it’s divided in three dimensionalities as follows:(1) Describe the teachers’opinions and preferences about some focused issues in school consolidation;(2) Show the feelings of teachers who experienced the school consolidation;(3) Display the teachers’satisfaction and valuation of school consolidation effect. The fourth part searches for the influencing factors of teachers’valuation to school consolidation by regression analysis. The fifth part summarizes and reflects the research results. The sixth part gives policy countermeasures and suggestions to improving the school consolidation policy based on the above analysis.The study shows that:(1) The teachers’living condition need to pay highly attention;(2) The teachers’opinion of small schools, boarding schools, criterions of school closure and moderate scale are significant for policy, the decision maker should give teacher the opportunity to express;(3) The teachers who have experienced the school consolidation hold multivariate valuations to school consolidation policy. On one side, it proves the condition and quality of education, on the other side, it brings some inconvenience to the teachers’living, and increase the teachers’working pressure;(4) From the teachers’ evaluation of the policy effects, the policy has achieved considerable progress, but also exposed some problems, and there are differences among the teacher groups;(5) Of all the influencing factors that plays on the evaluation, teachers’participation are the most important one;(6) The problems of school consolidation policy revealed in the research shows that the teachers’participation and the policy making mechanism need to improve as soon as possible.Therefore, respecting the teachers’rights and interests, expanding the discourse power of teacher and returning the teachers’subjectivity are the keys in school consolidation policy making. Innovation of the teacher participation mechanism, the transform of government functions and evaluation mechanism, the policy making mechanism and the compensation mechanism of the disadvantaged groups are needed.