Research On Per-Pupil Expenditure Standard Of Compulsory Education Based On The Input Approach

Compulsory education is an important cornerstone to achieve educational equity, and it is the priority of the educational development in our country. For a long time, there is huge difference on economy and finance between regions, which deteriorates the difference of compulsory educational investment, expands the gap of educational development and hinders the balanced development of compulsory education. In order to reduce the difference among regions and achieve the equalization of the educational public services, the central and provincial governments strengthen transfer payment. According to the relevant regulations, the central government should establish fair, transparent and appropriate incentive equalization transfer payment, and consider the financial revenue and expenditure. However, for the financial expenditure of compulsory education, we lack the clear standard of per-pupil expenditure. Therefore, under the goal of pursuing the high level and high quality of compulsory educational development, it is the focal point to make the per-pupil expenditure standard under the principle of input enough. Therefore, it is significant to estimate per-pupil expenditure and implement the integrated standard for improving transfer payment and allocating the educational resources reasonably; it is still a difficult problem.So we will use the relevant data of 1933 counties (cities) in 2010, and use the median value approach and standard school conditions approach to estimate the per-pupil expenditure. The median value approach is based on the counties (cities) education expenditure data to calculate; the standard school conditions approach is based on the basic educational standards, determining the resources, calculating the educational cost on the basis of resource price. Meanwhile, we take the result to be a simple application in financial transfer payment, and use the relative distribution method to measure the expenditure difference before and after the transfer payment. This paper draws the following conclusions:(1) The estimation results of the median value approach are 4691 Yuan for primary school,5589 Yuan for middle school; the estimation results of the standard school conditions approach are 4950 Yuan for primary school,5821 Yuan for middle school. The estimation results are close by using two approaches, which making the results more reliable; (2) Based on the per-pupil expenditure we estimate, we use Odden-Picus Adequacy Index to evaluate the adequacy of school finance. The index is about 85% for primary and middle school which indicates that our educational adequacy is relatively good, but we still need to focus on the counties which below adequacy; (3) The calculation results about transfer payment shows that there is a huge funding gap in establishing compulsory education, especially for the central region, which means the government should strengthen financial assistance and ensure adequate input; (4) After the governments strengthen financial assistance, we use relative distribution method to measure the difference before and after transfer payment. The results indicate that the distribution of per-pupil expenditure among the counties undergoes distinct change after transfer payment, enhancing the expenditure level; gathering in the middle large-scale, and it illustrates the difference is significantly improved.For the above conclusions, this paper puts up with the following measures:(1) Promote standardization reform of compulsory education; (2) Improve the legal construction of compulsory education and define per-pupil expenditure standard; (3) Improve the regulation of financial transfer payment.