Journal of East China Normal University(Educationa ›› 2014, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (1): 1-10.

• Balanced development of Education •     Next Articles

The influence of urbanization process on the class size and the scale of school of compulsory education in china

Fu Weili & Zhang Miao   

  1. Liaoning Normal University, Education College, Liaoning, 116029
  • Online:2014-03-20 Published:2014-04-14
  • Contact: Fu Weili Zhang Miao
  • About author:Fu Weili Zhang Miao

Abstract: The rapid urbanization process has led to the strong expansion of the scale of primary and secondary schools in some areas, this brings severe challenges to the adjustment about the class size and the scale of school of compulsory education in the urban and rural regions. There are two notable features on Compulsory education urbanization in China: firstly, the level of urbanization of the elementary school is lower than that of the city's overall development of urbanization in some populous provinces; secondly, the level of urbanization of junior high school is not only higher than that of the elementary school but also significantly surpasses that of the city’s urbanization. As for the following reasons, the slowing down of growth rate of the natural population ,the uncertain migration direction of the rural population, the unbalanced regional urbanization development and the recessive urbanization population explosion, there are several characteristics of school number and scale at the compulsory education,, including the total number is basic reasonable, different development between urban and rural areas, increasing pressure of covert growth of the student number, severe problems of the large class size in some areas. Several measures are suggested to solve the above problems, first to maintain the different balance between the number and scale of the school at two dimensions of rural and town; second, to keep consistent of the level of urbanization of education with the overall level of regional urbanization; third to cope with the uncertainty of floating population by using the flexibility student number of the small class; fourth to implement the scientific monitoring to the rapid urbanized big population province and the population in areas surrounding the center cities; fifth to establish the effective warning mechanism to control the class size and the school scale; sixth to improve the compulsory education coordination level; seventh to ensure that all levels governments are symmetrically in rights and obligations about the education of the floating population children.