A Cost-benefit Analysis Of Investment In Elementary Education

The21st century is the great period of the Chinese nation to open up the road torecovery, and along with the rapid economic development, the exploration of Chinesehuman resources (HR) and the development of modern education also ushered in thisnew opportunities and challenges. Education in China will be a helping hand for therealization “China Dream”, and China’s primary education will also contribute a greatdeal to China’s ongoing from a country of universal education to a country ofpowerful education.As a developing country, if China intends to achieve its economic prosperity,social stability, leading technology and a strong national defense, the development ofeducation is the basic guarantee and the most direct route. As a populous country, thedevelopment of basic education is its top priority. Primary education, involves themost number of Chinese education, benefits extensively among other education form.Whether it is monetary income or non-monetary income, primary education is themost “cost-effective” education. Developing primary education will improve theoverall quality of the widely educated people in China, relieve the heavy burden ofeconomic development from huge population and make it a powerful energy ofhuman capital, and no longer see it as a bottleneck that has restricted economicgrowth but as a continuous release of the source of creativity. Basic education shouldbe the priority in the development of education. This priority is consistent with theregulation of “step by step”, and also in line with the “cost–benefit” theory ineconomics.The purpose of this paper is to apply the “cost–benefit” theory of economics toanalyze the problems of education. By comparison with the primary education inother countries, it also analyzes the current situation and development trend of China’s primary education. And it illustrates the problems of primary education andsome exiting drawbacks in inputs from government and families by analyzing thegovernmental and family investment, benefits and rates of return respectively inprimary education. Finally, this thesis gives evaluation and recommendations forChinese primary education based on the above analysis.The government should increase investment in primary education, while thefamily should be relatively reduced the inputs. Investment in financial education, theChinese government invests too little in primary education, which leads to a much tooheavy burden on the family investment. China has just completed the strategicobjectives of the national financial education expenditure--4%of the total GDP--in2012, but there is still a big gap compared the developed countries. At the same time,every single family in China has invested about30%of their income in education oftheir children, which make the burden of the family heavier, lead to a reduce ofpersonal happiness, and produce social problems in educational inequality as well. Inthe proportion of investment in education of three, the proportion of investment ofChinese government on primary education, secondary education and higher educationis1:2:10. The investment in higher education is10times that of primary education,but the return on investment of primary education is the highest among the three.Therefore, this proportion is quite unreasonable, and it is inconsistent with the basiclaw of convergence of other countries. In this regard, the government should be morereasonable and effective to allocate the limited educational resources. In the aspect offamily investment in primary education, they should be more rational, more effective,and avoid following the trend blindly to resist the phenomenon of arbitrary charge ineducation and the phenomenon of non-standardized teaching.