Privatizing Public Schools and Publicizing Private Schools

I was amazed to learn that a girl studying business at Lehigh named Susan is from the same city in China as I am. Yesterday she invited me to lunch, so we had a good chat about our life experiences. I am seven years older than her. It turned out that we attended the same primary school. Later on, while I attended a middle school nearby, she attended a private school. She was the first person whom I know to attend a private school in my hometown. Our conversation helped me reflect on private education in China.

Let’s start with the private schools in the city I was born and raised up. I grew up in a medium sized city in eastern China. I attended public schools I was assigned to. By the time I graduated from primary school, there was only one private school, called New Era, in the city. It was a newly established private middle school. In the following years, more private schools were established at various levels. According to Susan, when she graduated from primary school, she had a couple of choices. She could either attend a public middle school, just as I did, or attend one of the private schools. She finally chose a newly established middle school named Bridge near her home. What is interesting about both the New Era and Bridge schools is their connections to by public middle schools. Most of the teachers worked in the mother public schools prior to the establishment of the private schools. New Era and Bridge charged more fees than public schools and generated great profit each year; in return, the mother schools assigned their best teachers, administrators, resources, and facilities to the private schools. These public funded and public run private schools became the first choice for many parents and, at the same time, the target of public criticism.

Theoretically, each primary school graduate is assigned to a certain middle school based on geographical proximity. The student’s parents can waive attendance by demonstrating their child will attend another private or public middle school. If parents want to choose another public school than the one their child is assigned to, they have to pay an extra amount of money and bride school officials. Parents also have the choice of private schools. Let’s take New Era, for example. Its mother school Brooks used to be one of the best middle schools before any private schools appeared in the city. Later, it established the affiliated private school, New Era, which was still run by the mother school. New Ear has two ways to attract students. The first way is by publicizing and advertizing the desirable educational quality of New Era among all of the students assigned to Brooks. Because Brooks assigns most of its high quality teachers to private schools, parents who can afford the high tuition usually choose to send their children to New Era instead of Brooks. If the parents cannot afford the high tuition or prefer public education, their children stay in Brooks. Many parents who cannot afford to send their children to New Era complain about the poor teacher quality in the mother school. The second way that New Era recruits its students is by advertizing to the broader community. Anyone who is interested is eligible to apply. Nowadays, New Era became one of the best middle schools in the city, while its mother school’s reputation dropped because its students’ performance in high school entrance exams has been on decrease.

China is not immune to the process of globalization. Chinese government rides on two competing forces of socialism and global capitalism. With socialism at its foundation, the government guarantees that public schools are predominant in number. As a result of global capitalism, private schools have gained momentum (Mok, 2005). The private sector is encouraged by policy because private schools are considered a driving force of enhancing educational quality in the country overall. Meanwhile, public schools have been privatized to make profit. Currently, there is inequality within public schools due to the embedded private sector. To my mind, public schools should offer equal resources to all enrolled students. In the wave of neoliberal market economy, how can the Chinese school system, especially in the public sector, maintain a place where all students benefit?

References

Mok, K. H. (2005). Riding over socialism and global capitalism: Changing education governance and social policy paradigms in post-Mao China. Comparative Education, 41, 217-242.