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The Chinese education system consists of six years of primary school, three of lower secondary, and three of upper secondary. Children are required to attend the nine years of primary and lower secondary school; around the age of 15, they have the option of leaving school or entering an upper secondary program. All students attend an academic lower secondary school, at the end of which they take a locally administered entrance exam for upper secondary school. Depending on the results of this exam, they may enter an academic or a vocational upper secondary school, or they may choose to end their formal education. In academic upper secondary schools, students take classes in core and elective subjects over three years in preparation for university entrance exams; vocational schools offer coursework for two to four years in a number of occupational areas, including skills for managerial and technical personnel as well as in more traditional vocations such as agriculture. Across China, 52.5% of students attend academic upper secondary school; in Shanghai, this figure rises to 97%.
Curriculum
China has a national curriculum. Until 1988, China also used standardized syllabi and centrally-issued textbooks. In the late 1980s, however, the Chinese Ministry of Education began to approve the use of multiple texts and resources. Schools can now choose their materials from a ministry-approved list.

Much of China's educational system is built around examination preparation. Because examination results can essentially chart the course of a student's academic and work life, parents, teachers and students often focus on exams to the exclusion of all else. Many schools used to promote this focus, removing all "extraneous" subjects, such as art, music and physical education from the schedule, leaving more hours for students to focus on the exam subjects. However, in recent years this has begun to change, with educators, policymakers and even parents coming to realize that the emphasis placed on high stakes tests may actually hinder performance. China now considers curriculum reform to be an important priority.

Shanghai has been working hard on curriculum reform, often piloting new curriculum before it is rolled out to the rest of the country. The thrust of curriculum reform since the late 1980s has been the de-emphasis on exams and the promotion of educational equity. There has also been a shift towards a focus on conceptual and experiential learning. In 1988, Shanghai established a three-block curriculum, which enabled students to participate in required and elective courses as well as extracurricular activities as part of their schooling, which was a major change from the previous curriculum focused solely on core subjects. Textbooks were redesigned to align with the new curriculum. Ten years later, new reforms produced a curriculum that integrated many subjects and was centered on student engagement. This focus on non-core subjects means that Shanghai students are required to do one hour of physical activity each day, and often participate in "service" or "social" learning, which involves community-service oriented field trips to learn more about their society.

The curriculum is organized around eight "learning domains," which are meant to encourage active inquiry and interdisciplinary understanding. These domains are language and literature, mathematics, natural science, social sciences, technology, arts, physical education and a practicum. The curriculum is also organized into three separate components: the basic curriculum (core subjects); the enriched curriculum (elective courses); and the inquiry-based curriculum (extra-curricular activities). With these domains and components in mind, schools are encouraged to adapt the government's curriculum frameworks to meet their students' needs. Teachers are encouraged to remember to "return class time to students" and "to every question there should be more than a single answer."
Instruction
Chinese class sizes are typically about 50 students, though this varies depending on the location of the school. In urban areas, where teachers are plentiful and population is strictly regulated, classes can be much smaller; in rural areas, where schools struggle to attract qualified professionals, classes may be 100 students or more. Teachers rely on extremely detailed study schemes and tend to teach only one type of class (for example, Senior Secondary 2 Physics) 12 to 15 times a week. They formulate these plans in consultation with other teachers in their subject area. Students are expected to learn both in and outside of the classroom; in order to ensure that students stay engaged with subject material after school hours, teachers assign daily homework, on which students often spend many hours a day.

In Shanghai, student engagement in the classroom is prized. Students are expected to be full participants in the lessons, which often include problem solving individually or in groups. This emphasis on student engagement is common in Chinese schools, but Shanghai schools have been leaders in focusing on understanding and application rather than memorization and have even instituted a limit on the number of hours of homework a student may be assigned per day. The top Shanghai schools have also ended the practice of holding classes on evenings or weekends, and all Shanghai schools have recently become more interested in developing a well-rounded student. Students take part in extracurricular activities to promote organization and leadership, and are required to do an hour of physical activity a day in addition to their coursework. This is a clear departure from the traditional Chinese exclusive emphasis on core subjects and on rote learning.

Outside of school, however, students continue to receive a great deal of instruction in the core subjects, working with private tutors or enrolling in cram schools. These schools are more focused on drilling students in concepts and strategies. Even the top students typically participate in cram schools and tutoring, as examination results are still critical despite growing dissatisfaction with the emphasis on these tests.
Assessment
Chinese students receive formative assessments throughout their education. These typically take the form of year-end or term-end tests as well as casual assessment from teachers. They are also required to take graduation examinations at the end of primary, lower secondary and upper secondary school, in addition to the entrance examinations for the next level of schooling. These tests are formulated by the local education departments, and typically examine at least mathematics and Chinese language knowledge, though they can include other subjects. Students who hope to go on to university must also sit for a rigorous university entrance examination at the end of upper secondary school, the results of which have a major impact on their university acceptance prospects.

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The Chinese education system consists of six years of primary school, three of lower secondary, and three of upper secondary. Children are required to attend the nine years of primary and lower secondary school; around the age of 15, they have the option of leaving school or entering an upper secondary program.

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LIUPU, China -- Last year, finally, everyone in Liupu village was able to read and write 1,500 Chinese characters, a census showed. Village leaders threw a big dinner to celebrate, presenting commemorative teacups to the last two adults to make the grade.

But ask Zhao Huapu, the earnest principal of Liupu Shezu Girls School, how many people here can actually read and write, and he gives an embarrassed smile. Nearly 30 percent of Liupu's adults are illiterate.

"That's just reality. . . . A lot of them can't read and write," said Zhao, who acknowledged that the census is based on a test that fails to measure adult literacy accurately.

Illiteracy is increasing in China, despite a 50-year-old campaign to stamp it out and a declaration by the government in 2000 that it had been nearly eradicated. The reasons are complex, from the cost of a rural education to the growing appeal of migrant work that draws Chinese away from classrooms and toward far-off cities.

In many cases, as in this farming hamlet in China's southern Guizhou province, villagers whose education ended in elementary school have simply forgotten basic skills.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of illiterate Chinese adults jumped by 33 percent, from 87 million to 116 million, the state-run China Daily reported this month. The newspaper noted that even before the increase, China's illiterate population had accounted for 11.3 percent of the world's total.

"The situation is worrying," Gao Xuegui, director of the Education Ministry's illiteracy eradication office, told China Daily, blaming the increase on changing attitudes toward knowledge in a market economy. "Illiteracy is not only a matter of education but also has a great social impact."

Gao's remarks echoed concerns voiced by literacy researchers and served as a reminder of the challenges facing China's mostly rural population.

This country is proud of its traditional focus on education, as well as more recent efforts to raise standards, such as passage of a law that says every child has the right to nine years of schooling. Yet in many rural areas, such schooling remains unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

In 2000, officials announced that the illiteracy rate in Tibet, the worst in China, had dropped to roughly 42 percent from 95 percent about 50 years earlier. From 2001 to 2005, China educated nearly 10 million adults who couldn't read and write, the Education Ministry said in September. Authorities have also boasted of higher enrollment figures in primary and middle schools.

Experts, however, contend that official reports are sometimes unreliable. Local officials are pressured to inflate enrollment figures, and students who are enrolled often don't bother to show up, they say.

There are also questions about how literacy statistics are gathered. In Liupu, for example, Zhao and other local leaders go door-to-door each September, asking the village's roughly 300 families how many people are in each household and what type of education they have. Those who can show they have graduated from primary school are not counted as illiterate, regardless of whether they can actually read or write.

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washington post international news headlines

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Illiteracy Jumps in China, Despite 50-Year Campaign to Eradicate It

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LIUPU, China -- Last year, finally, everyone in Liupu village was able to read and write 1,500 Chinese characters, a census showed. Village leaders threw a big dinner to celebrate, presenting commemorative teacups to the last two adults to make the grade.

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Outline of history of education in China

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Outline of history of education in China

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Historical Background: Expansion of Public Education - New York Times

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The theme of education exists as a backdrop to all other areas of China's development presented in China Rises. This section outlines current issues in education and poses questions for further discussion and research.

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Chinese minister of education discusses education reforms

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Chinese minister of education discusses education reforms

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The western world watches China's rise as a formidable world-power with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Sci-fi films depict a futuristic world where Baidu.com is the new Google and Mcdonalds has been replaced by Grandma Wang's Dumpling Emporium. And yet again Shanghai is number one on the Programme for International Student Assessment's (Pisa) 2012 ranking list of international education, and the US is once again at a low rank, this time 36th place. The US is desperate, and naturally the Chinese educational system seems like an answer. But let me tell you - this is not the case. I know; for two years I attended a local Shanghainese high school and this is the truth: they are terrible.

The biggest problem with Chinese education? It's medieval. Shanghainese education is just like the stories my grandmother tells about high school in the 1940's. Footage of military parades in Fascist Italy share an unnerving resemblance to the morning assemblies from my school in Shanghai. Chinese education would be a poison for America, not a remedy.

The problem is that there are too many Chinese students. Shanghainese classrooms have about 40 students and in the countryside classes have over 60. The most efficient way to organize all these children is by testing, categorizing and grading them - Chinese education is essentially elitist. Students that excel in school are rewarded with prizes and encouragement, but struggling students are abandoned. I once served as a translator for the principal of my school when seven Swedish principals came to visit Shanghai. The Swedes asked what the school did for students with "special needs" and the principal answered:

The special students who are doing well in class? We make sure to put a lot of focus on them.

This Chinese principal didn't understand the concept of special needs, and neither does the Chinese educational system.

A major reason why certain students do poorly in China is that their skills are ignored. Creativity and critical thinking are seen as objects of western frivolousness. Although Chinese students analyze literature, they never write essays and instead they simply memorize the texts. I have never memorized so much in my life as I did in Shanghai. The ideal Shanghainese student is like a sea sponge blindly absorbing any and all information and spewing it all out during the tests. The system in the US is not ideal - nobody can call the SAT a platform for creativity - but the American system does at least encourage questions and tries to make students into critical thinkers. If there are Chinese students with a critical mind, they are almost always self-taught.

The Chinese educational system produces millions of test-taking experts. The culmination of this test-taking mania is the Gaokao, the national university entrance exam. Much like the SAT, these exams give you a certain amount of points and these points correspond to the university you may attend. In 2006, a record high 9.5 million students took these tests. All three years of high school are devoted to the exams, and teachers refer to them continually.

In the last year the entire senior grade is usually sent off to another campus to make sure that they are not distracted from their study by social life. Many of my friends agree that the test is useless - the calculus problems and memorized literature will not be of any use in the future - but they have no choice. This is the way the system works, and to succeed in life they have to follow it.

So obviously when the Shanghainese students have a Pisa test placed in front of them, they complete it without having to think twice. Chinese children have been taking tests since the arrival of their milk teeth. The system breeds Pisa champions, but it also ruins young lives.

Should America follow China? Absolutely not, so stop the rumors. American education isn't perfect, but while following Shanghai might mean higher Pisa scores, it would be disastrous for the nation's children and its future.

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Here's the truth about Shanghai schools: they're terrible | Saga Ringmar

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The western world watches China's rise as a formidable world-power with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Sci-fi films depict a futuristic world where Baidu.com is the new Google and Mcdonalds has been replaced by Grandma Wang's Dumpling Emporium.

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Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children's scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in hopes of improving their concentration.

Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam. Some well-off parents dangle the promise of fabulous rewards for offspring whose scores get them into a top-ranked university: parties, 100,000 renminbi in cash, or about $14,600, or better.

"My father even promised me, if I get into a college like Nankai University in Tianjin, 'I'll give you a prize, an Audi,' " said Chen Qiong, a 17-year-old girl taking the exam in Beijing.

Outside the exam sites, parents keep vigil for hours, as anxious as husbands waiting for their wives to give birth. A tardy arrival is disastrous. One student who arrived four minutes late in 2007 was turned away, even though she and her mother knelt before the exam proctor, begging for leniency.

Cheating is increasingly sophisticated. One group of parents last year outfitted their children with tiny earpieces, persuaded a teacher to fax them the questions and then transmitted the answers by cellphone. Another father equipped a student with a miniscanner and had nine teachers on standby to provide the answers. In all, 2,645 cheaters were caught last year.

Critics complain that the gao kao illustrates the flaws in an education system that stresses memorization over independent thinking and creativity. Educators also say that rural students are at a disadvantage and that the quality of higher education has been sacrificed for quantity.

But the national obsession with the test also indicates progress. Despite a slight drop in registration this year - the first decline in seven years - five million more students signed up for the test than did so in 2002.

China now has more than 1,900 institutions of higher learning, nearly double the number in 2000. Close to 19 million students are enrolled, a sixfold jump in one decade.

Liu Qichao, 19, a big-boned student with careful habits, plans to be the first in his family to go to college. "There just were not a lot of universities then," said his father, Liu Jie, who graduated from high school in 1980 and sells textile machinery. His son harbors hopes of getting into one of China's top universities.

But the whole family was shaken by the results of his first try at the gao kao last June.

The night before the exam, he lingered at his parents' bedside, unable to sleep for hours. "I was so nervous during the exam my mind went blank," he said. He scored 432 points out of a possible 750, too low to be admitted even to a second-tier institution.

Silence reigned in the house for days afterward. "My mother was very angry," he said. "She said, 'All these years of raising you and washing your clothes and cooking for you, and you earn such a bad score.'

"I cried for half a month."

Then the family arrived at a new plan: He would enroll in a military-style boarding school in Tianjin, devoting himself exclusively to test preparation, and retake the test this June.

Despite the annual school fee of 38,500 renminbi (about $5,640) - well above the average annual income for a Chinese family - he had plenty of company.

One of his classmates, Li Yiran, a cheerful 18-year-old, estimated that more than one-fourth of the seniors at their secondary school, Yangcun No. 1 Middle School, were "restudy" students.

Ms. Li said she learned the hard way about the school's strict regimen. When her cellphone rang in class one day, the teacher smashed it against the radiator. Classes continue for three weeks straight, barely interrupted by a one-day break.

Days after most of their classmates left for home, Mr. Liu and Ms. Li were still holed up last week in their classrooms. Mr. Liu's wrist was bruised from pressing the edge of his blue metal desk, piled with a foot-high stack of textbooks.

Ms. Li's breakfast was a favorite among test-takers: a bread stick next to two eggs, symbolizing a 100 percent score.

Hours after they finished the test on Monday, both students had collected the answers from the district education bureau and begun the laborious process, with the help of their teachers, of estimating their scores.

Mr. Liu calculated that his score leaped by more than 100 points over last year's dismal performance. But he was still downcast, uncertain whether he would make the cutoff to apply to top-tier universities. The cutoff mark can vary by an applicant's place of residence and ethnicity.

Ms. Li, on the other hand, was exhilarated by her estimate of 482.5, figuring it was probably high enough for admittance to a college of the second rank.

By Wednesday evening, both were buoyed by news of the cutoff scores for their district. His estimated mark was well above the one needed to apply to first-tier schools, and hers was a solid five points above the notch for the second tier.

Before the test, Ms. Li's aunt warned her that this was her last chance for a college degree. Even if she knelt before her mother and begged, her aunt said, her mother would refuse to let her take the test again.

But Ms. Li, a hardened veteran of not one but two gao kao ordeals, had a ready retort: "Come on. Even if my mother kneels down before me, I will refuse to take this test again."

Correction: June 23, 2009

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China's College Entry Test, Gao Kao, Is National Obsession

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Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children's scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in hopes of improving their concentration. Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam.

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Innovation is a critical component of national power. It propels countries to develop new products or methods of production that drive economic progress and enable states to tackle transnational challenges, such as climate change and global health crises. The ability of a country to cultivate its capacity for innovation rests with its domestic education system. A well-educated workforce is instrumental to technological and scientific discovery, which can propel states to the apex of the increasingly innovation-based global economy. This need is particularly salient for China as its leaders seek to push the Chinese economy up the global value chain.

Primary and Secondary Education

In an effort to promote sustainable development, Chinese leaders have sought to improve educational quality and increase access across the country. The most notable government policy, the 1986 Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, called for achievement of the 'two basics' ( liangji): universal enrollment among school-aged children (6-15 years) and full literacy among those under the age of 20. Other measures have centered on revising the national curriculum and enhancing teacher training programs.

Yet educational access remains uneven in China. Students born into affluent families generally have greater access to high-quality education than those from lower income backgrounds. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics suggest that urban residents in China enjoy a nearly threefold income advantage over their rural counterparts. The household registration system ( hukou) has further widened this development gap by restricting the internal movement of persons. Education-finance policies requiring local governments to bear partial responsibility for funding schools have compounded this issue, leaving less affluent areas without sufficient resources to pay skilled teachers, purchase necessary instruction materials, and maintain school facilities.

Migration from rural areas has forced the closure of village schools, contributing to the decrease in Chinese primary schools from 668,685 in 1995 to 201,377 in 2014.

Literacy is a baseline indicator of educational access. High levels of literacy serve as the foundation for improved access to information and directly enhance an individual's ability to contribute to society. As of 2011, China had all but eliminated illiteracy among young and middle-aged citizens - a landmark achievement for a country with the world's largest population. Nevertheless, provincial variations reveal the incomplete nature of China's ongoing development. Wealthy cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, reported 2014 literacy rates (98.52 percent and 96.85 percent) comparable with those of developed countries. At the other extreme, Tibet's literacy rate was a mere 60.07 percent in same year, pegging it closer to under-developed countries like Haiti and Zambia.

Regional variations in educational access become more evident when considering the average length of schooling per student. To assess the role education plays in evaluating economic development and quality of life, the United Nations calculates the Education Index (EI) as part of its annually released Human Development Index (HDI). EI is calculated from mean and expected years of schooling and ranges from 0 (no educational attainment) to 1 (theoretically perfect educational attainment). EI values vary widely across China. In 2014, Beijing enjoyed a high EI of 0.854, which closely matches that of Iceland (0.853), an OECD country that ranks sixth on the Human Development Index. EI is lowest in Tibet, whose value of 0.45, when compared to EI values from around the world, places it in the bottom 20 percent.

Education Index by Income Level

Income-levels correspond to the World Bank's development classification, which uses GNI per capita (Atlas method) to calculate the levels of development.

Urbanization has exaggerated regional differences in educational access. The movement of people from rural to urban areas within China in search of employment opportunities and higher wages is among the largest internal migrations in human history. Migration from rural areas has forced the closure of village schools, contributing to the decrease in Chinese primary schools from 668,685 in 1995 to 201,377 in 2014. Rural migrants have flooded the labor market in urban centers, including Beijing and Shanghai, such that migrant laborers comprise roughly one-third of China's total labor force. These population shifts have contributed to overcrowded classrooms, which may come under even greater strain as the number of children of migrant workers residing in China's biggest cities is expected to increase by 1.5 million annually.

More developed regions have managed to offset much of this demographic shift. Some of China's most densely populated areas compare favorably with cities in the United States in terms of student-teacher ratios. The average number of students per teacher in primary and secondary schools in Beijing and Shanghai is 15:1 and 14:1, respectively. By comparison, New York City and Los Angeles have elementary and secondary school student-teacher ratios of 15:1 and 21:1, respectively. Chinese classrooms also have fewer students per teacher than the global average at both the primary and secondary level.

Less economically developed regions often suffer from the migration of qualified teachers to more developed parts of the country and lack adequate funds to hire and properly train instructors. Despite generally lower population density levels than urban areas, limited economic resources manifest in fewer, less-qualified teachers per student. Guangxi province, for instance, has primary and secondary student-teacher ratios of 20:1 and 24:1. These patterns are mirrored in less developed regions around the world. According to a 2013 United Nations report, adolescents residing in rural areas of developing countries are less likely to have access to institutions with favorable student-teacher ratios. In India, insufficient funding has resulted in national primary and secondary student-teacher ratios of at 29:1 and 34:1, respectively.

In order to address these imbalances, the central government has implemented policies to realign education funding. The National Plan for Medium- and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) set ambitious achievement targets for primary and secondary education. The plan emphasizes the need to boost scientific and technological innovation by developing China's human-resource base. Stated goals include universalizing preschool education and improving the nine-year compulsory education system through the "rational allocation" of resources and provision of "special support" to the less fortunate.

Local governments are also taking action to tackle disparities in education access. Shenzhen has waived school fees and Shanghai has offered legal status and funding for migrant children. The Ministry of Education has vowed to crack down on arbitrary fees, which allow some families to send their children to better schools outside the student's home province. Additionally, the Chinese government passed the Compulsory Education Law in 2006 to galvanize local reform, prompting cities such as Wuhan to develop policies that allow migrant children living in urban areas to attend local schools without the requisite urban hukou.

Tertiary Education

Tertiary education, generally understood as post-secondary school learning supported by universities, technical training institutes, community colleges, and research laboratories, is essential to a country's competitiveness in an increasingly innovation-driven global economy. Over the last decade, China has made considerable strides in advancing tertiary education, with the number of institutions more than doubling and government expenditures increasing from $52.66 billion in 2003 to $311 billion in 2014. The 211 Project and 985 Project, initiatives designed to raise research standards and cultivate rencai (people with talent), further demonstrate the effort Chinese leaders are making to modernize the country's education system.

At present, however, the quality of Chinese universities lags behind that of other countries. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016-2017, a widely respected London-based university measure, includes only two Chinese institutions among the top 100 universities worldwide. Peking and Qinghua universities place 29th and 25th respectively, among the 978 tertiary institutions featured in the world ranking. By comparison, the study found that the United States is home to fifteen of the top twenty universities in the world. University rankings released by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy also reflect this division. Qinghua and Peking universities rank 58 th and 71 st in the consultancy's global comparison. China's 3rd and 4th nationally-ranked universities, Zhejiang and Fudan, fail to make the top 100.

China's top universities are highly selective. Peking University does not publicize its admission rates, but applicants from Beijing are believed to have a 0.5 percent chance of acceptance, which is up to 40 times higher than applicants from elsewhere in the country. When compared globally, Peking University's low admission rate reveals the exceptionally competitive nature of tertiary education in China. Two of the world's most well-regarded higher education institutions in the United States, Harvard University and Stanford University, have admission rates around 5 percent. In the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have acceptance rates over 17 percent.

The structure of the national admissions process further compounds this disparity. College hopefuls are bound by their hukou (household registration) and performance on the gaokao, China's National Higher Education Entrance Examination. Every year, universities set quotas for how many applicants may be admitted from each province. Institutions allocate the highest number of spots to applicants from the institution's home province, and typically preferential treatment is given to urban residents from elsewhere for the remaining spots. Consequently, students from rural or lower-income Chinese provinces must often score significantly higher on the gaokao than their counterparts with urban hukou in order to be admitted into the same institution.

China and India supply almost half of (46.4 percent) the global 6.4 million Science and Engineering bachelor's degrees.

Chinese universities are generally understood to be divided into four tiers, with Tier 1 encompassing universities designated to receive substantial central government funding to develop China as a world-class research center. The cutoff gaokao scores ( fenshuxian) required for admission into each tier are determined annually, but a student's chances for acceptance usually depend on the difficulty of the gaokao, university quotas, academic interests, and their hukou. A high number of Tier-1 institutions are concentrated in wealthy municipalities and provinces, which earmarks them for more government funding than their lower-ranking counterparts. Specifically, five of the top ten universities in China are located in Beijing and Shanghai.

Tertiary enrollment rates further reflect China's stark urban-rural education divide. On the national level, just over a quarter of the country's college-age population is enrolled in a tertiary institution. Shanghai, one of China's wealthiest municipality, boasts an enrollment rate of 70 percent, while provinces like Guangxi suffer from enrollment rates below 20 percent. A similar trend surfaces when comparing countries across the globe. Highly developed countries in North America and Western Europe have tertiary enrollment rates averaging around 75 percent. Conversely, in developing regions in Central Asia, just over a quarter of the population attains tertiary education.

Many of those who attend Chinese universities pursue degrees in science and engineering fields. According to the 2016 Science and Engineering Indicators Report, China and India supply almost half of (46.4 percent) the global 6.4 million Science and Engineering (S&E) bachelor's degrees. The two countries are projected to collectively account for two-thirds of the increase in global S&E graduates through 2030. By comparison, the European Union and United States supplied 11.5 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively, of the global share of S&E graduates.

This outpouring of S&E graduates may present its own problems for China as it seeks to transition to a consumer-driven economy. A Qinghua and Fudan University joint study observed a gap between China's supply and its need for highly skilled labor. Specifically, western provinces have skills shortages in fields such as research and development and capital operation, and eastern provinces lack skilled technical workers. Moreover, high-skilled workers often seek opportunities in the same cities, which can lead to an excess of job hunters in a particular market. In 2013, the tertiary education system supplied more highly-skilled workers than the economy demanded, resulting in a new-graduate unemployment rate more than three times higher than the national average. Educational attainment outstripping market demands is not unique to China. In South Korea, recent graduates face a highly competitive job market with scarce employment opportunities, forcing some students to linger at university.

Cultivating a highly-skilled domestic labor force is crucial as China endeavors to transition to an innovation-based economy. As outlined in the National Medium- and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010-2020), the central government has vowed to improve coordination between tertiary education and demands in the labor market. Furthermore, it aims to establish higher-education research bases in central and western provinces, increase spending on human resources from 10.75 to 15 percent of GDP, and raise the national tertiary enrollment rate to 40 percent by 2020. Effective implementation of the Talent Development Plan may prove critical as Chinese leaders seek to facilitate the country's economic shift from a manufacturing power to global innovator.

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How Does Education in China Compare with Other Countries? | ChinaPower Project

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China is seeking to improve educational quality and increase access across the country. A well-educated Chinese workforce can bolster China's technological and scientific development and thus strengthen the country's position in an increasingly innovation-based global economy.

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China's education gap between rural and urban areas

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China's education gap between rural and urban areas

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"Rural students stand virtually no chance when competing academically with their urban counterparts," Jiang Nengjie, a friend and independent filmmaker who made a documentary on the left-behind children, told me. As a result, he said, most young people from his hometown village in central China head directly to factories in Guangdong Province, on the southern coast, after finishing middle school, because "the return is larger than going to a third-rate college."

For migrant children who follow their parents to cities, the opportunity for a decent education is similarly limited, as various government policies foil their attempts at full integration. The hukou system - a residency status that ties access to subsidized social services to one's hometown - denies rural children the right to enter urban public schools. Many migrant children are relegated to private schools that charge higher tuition and offer subpar education. Recent reforms in cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai have had only a tangential impact on leveling the playing field.

In Beijing, home to eight million migrant workers, preconditions for admission seem intended less to promote educational equity than to exacerbate the discrimination. Some parents have switched jobs, sued the government and even engineered divorces to get around onerous documentation requirements, which often vary from district to district. Many urban migrants ultimately have no choice but to send their children back to their rural hometowns for inferior schooling.

China requires a vast majority of students to take the national college entrance examination in their home province, and elite universities allocate higher admission quotas to first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. One researcher showed that an applicant from Beijing was 41 times more likely to be admitted to Peking University than a comparable student from the poor and largely rural province of Anhui.

Even an urban residency status doesn't ensure educational equity among city dwellers. The quality of urban schools varies widely, and the competition to enter top schools has spawned rampant corruption. Parents fork out tens of thousands of dollars under the guise of "voluntary donations" to secure a slot for their children in elite schools. At top-ranked high schools, such as the one I attended in Beijing, these charges can reach $130,000. Further advantage can be purchased by parents who can pay handsomely to hire teachers to offer extra tutoring to their children, a practice discouraged by the authorities but widespread in reality.

To curb the culture of graft, Beijing has implemented policies this year that require students to attend elementary schools in their home districts. But the new rules, instead of stopping parents from gaming the system, simply channeled the cash to another market. Property in well-regarded school districts became Beijing's hottest commodity this spring. Families have been tripping over one another to trade spacious homes in posh compounds for dilapidated flats next to prestigious elementary schools. In a sought-after neighborhood in the Xicheng district, for example, a 107-square-foot flat was listed for $550,000.

CHINESE education, having always placed enormous emphasis on test scores, is now becoming a game of another set of numbers. When graduating high school students walk into test centers to take the most important exam in their lives, their chances are determined not only by a decade of assiduous study, but also by the costs of their cramming lessons, the years their parents have toiled in cities in exchange for an urban residency permit, and the admission quotas universities allot to the provinces. For poor students, it's harder than ever to overcome the odds.

My mother, who attended Peking University in the late 1970s, remembered being surrounded by classmates of all walks of life - from the heirs of party officials and the scions of intellectuals, to workers fresh out of factories and peasants hailing from far-flung provinces. In the decades that followed, the economic opening that has led to vast wealth, along with extreme income inequality, has all but obliterated such diversity in the top tier of Chinese education.

In China, which pioneered the use of merit-based examinations to fill official positions, an educational system that was once a great equalizer now reinforces inequality.

Chang Qing, a friend and mother of a 16-year-old girl, has been preparing her daughter, Xiaoshuang, for America since the girl was a toddler. She played her tapes of English lessons made from Disney movies, and later hosted a steady stream of exchange students from America to hone her child's accent. Now, her daughter speaks impeccable English and attends a private academy in Beijing where annual tuition is around $24,000. Ms. Chang believes that nothing short of an Ivy League education will suffice.

On a trip to the countryside in Hunan Province (the home of Mao Zedong), I met Jiang Heng, a skinny 11-year-old whose parents work in a handbag factory in neighboring Guangdong. The boy attends a local elementary school that takes him an hour and half to walk to and, together with his younger brother, is looked after by his grandparents. I asked him what he wanted to do after high school. He looked confused, as if the answer was too obvious. "I want to be a migrant worker," he told me, without blinking.

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"Rural students stand virtually no chance when competing academically with their urban counterparts," Jiang Nengjie, a friend and independent filmmaker who made a documentary on the left-behind children, told me.

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WASHINGTON, April 27, 2010 - "Education must face modernization, the world, and the future." China's Deputy Director General of Basic Education Wang Dinghua chose reformer Deng Xiaoping's words to describe why education is critical to the country's development.

"We need to shift from a nation with large human resources to a nation with strong human resouces," continued Wang.

Wang lays out a four-part strategy that includes plans to expand pre-school and compulsory education; greater equity in access to a good education; enhanced quality of education; and better data and assessment measures.

These reforms are not easy given the nation's challenges. China is where the largest human migration in world history is taking place: some 300 million people are moving from rural areas to urban centers in search of better economic opportunities. In his book, China, Inc., Ted Fishman estimates that the equivalent of 30 Houstons are constructed every year in China to accomodate urban growth-this means a lot of infrastructure: buildings, highways, energy grids, and new schools. One of the Ministry of Education's greatest tasks is ensuring that urban and rural schools receive the resources they need to provide an excellent education for all students. Wang specified one plan to rotate teaching assignments on a five-year basis so minority students in the most remote areas have the same educational opportunities as their counterpart in the most prosperous cities.

Another core feature of the reform strategy is updating curriculum to meet real-world needs. For instance, math will de-emphasize response speed and the need to memorize complex and seldom-used formulas. In their place, the curriculum will encourage multiple ways of solving problems, and a deeper understanding of concepts relating to space development, for example. In science, inauthentic demonstrations, calculations, and drills will be replaced with student experiments in real-world applications, including an emphasis on new energy, health, and conservation.

The ten-year strategy is in draft form. The Ministry invited public comment, and literally received millions of responses. The government will release the final reform strategy in summer 2010, and its plans will be rolled out to China's 370,000 elementary and secondary schools, affecting the nation's 200 million K-12 students.

Wang Dinghua is the deputy director general for the Basic Education Department in the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Education. Wang gave his remarks at the Learning with the World conference, organized by Asia Society and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

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WASHINGTON, April 27, 2010 - "Education must face modernization, the world, and the future." China's Deputy Director General of Basic Education Wang Dinghua chose reformer Deng Xiaoping's words to describe why education is critical to the country's development.

"We need to shift from a nation with large human resources to a nation with strong human resouces," continued Wang.

Wang lays out a four-part strategy that includes plans to expand pre-school and compulsory education; greater equity in access to a good education; enhanced quality of education; and better data and assessment measures.

These reforms are not easy given the nation's challenges. China is where the largest human migration in world history is taking place: some 300 million people are moving from rural areas to urban centers in search of better economic opportunities. In his book, China, Inc., Ted Fishman estimates that the equivalent of 30 Houstons are constructed every year in China to accomodate urban growth-this means a lot of infrastructure: buildings, highways, energy grids, and new schools. One of the Ministry of Education's greatest tasks is ensuring that urban and rural schools receive the resources they need to provide an excellent education for all students. Wang specified one plan to rotate teaching assignments on a five-year basis so minority students in the most remote areas have the same educational opportunities as their counterpart in the most prosperous cities.

Another core feature of the reform strategy is updating curriculum to meet real-world needs. For instance, math will de-emphasize response speed and the need to memorize complex and seldom-used formulas. In their place, the curriculum will encourage multiple ways of solving problems, and a deeper understanding of concepts relating to space development, for example. In science, inauthentic demonstrations, calculations, and drills will be replaced with student experiments in real-world applications, including an emphasis on new energy, health, and conservation.

The ten-year strategy is in draft form. The Ministry invited public comment, and literally received millions of responses. The government will release the final reform strategy in summer 2010, and its plans will be rolled out to China's 370,000 elementary and secondary schools, affecting the nation's 200 million K-12 students.

Wang Dinghua is the deputy director general for the Basic Education Department in the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Education. Wang gave his remarks at the Learning with the World conference, organized by Asia Society and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

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WASHINGTON, April 27, 2010 - "Education must face modernization, the world, and the future." China's Deputy Director General of Basic Education Wang Dinghua chose reformer Deng Xiaoping's words to describe why education is critical to the country's development. "We need to shift from a nation with large human resources to a nation with strong human resouces," continued Wang.

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by Heather Singmaster

China has a long tradition of respect for education. In fact, there is much societal and family pressure to do well academically. This has fostered education reform throughout history at many levels. While the entire country has made strides in education, Shanghai is at the forefront as it has been given special authority to experiment with reform before the rest of the country. With its recent rankings at the top of the PISA 2009 exam, all eyes will be on how these reforms were made.

Shanghai, the largest city in China, was the first to achieve one hundred percent primary and junior high school enrollment. It was one of the first to achieve almost universal secondary school attendance. Also notable is that all students in Shanghai who want to attend some type of higher education are able to do so. Universal education involved including children of migrant workers from rural areas of the country - amounting to 21 percent of school children in the city. (With a population of nearly 20 million, that's nearly four million migrant school children.) In other parts of China, these children may be seen as a problem. Shanghai, however, is a city fueled by migrants, and it embraced this population and integrated these children into its classrooms.

China's education system has struggled to move away from the exam-based system that drives curriculum and results in memorizing facts to pass the test. In 1985, Shanghai began a process of reform and created exams that test the application of real-life skills. Multiple choice questions no longer appear on the city's exams.

Despite the reforms, exams still exist. An estimated 80 percent of students attend night and weekend "cram schools" to ensure that they pass. This comes in addition to nightly homework and extracurricular activities - making the life of a Chinese student overwhelming. The central Chinese government is aware of this countrywide problem and its new 2020 reform efforts call for a reduction in student workload. Shanghai is additionally working to improve students' education experience so that they learn to learn and not just learn many facts. An updated curriculum is at the center of this process.

Beginning in 1985, in an attempt to move away from the high-pressure exam system and increase the quality of education, Shanghai began to allow students to take elective courses, which led to new textbooks and materials. Implemented in 2008, a renewed effort to encourage student learning rather than accumulation of knowledge, led to eight curricular "learning domains":

language and literature

mathematics

natural science

social sciences

technology

arts

physical education

practicum

Schools were then encouraged to create their own curriculum and outside groups such as museums became partners in education. Part of the new curriculum includes an emphasis on inquiry-based education. Students independently explore research topics of interest to themselves in order to promote social wellbeing, creative and critical thinking, and again, learning to learn.

To support the new education changes, certification processes for teachers were implemented. Teacher professional development requirements also increased - teachers in Shanghai must now complete 240 hours of professional development in five years. An online database provides help with design and implementation of curriculum, research papers, and best practice examples. Teachers are now encouraged to allow time for student activities in classrooms rather relying solely on presentations.
Lessons for the United States
One interesting strategy employed by Shanghai to improve weak schools is the commissioned education program. Under this scheme, top performing schools are assigned a weak school to administer. The "good" school will send a team of teachers and a principal to lead the school and improve it. This has been happening within the city but also as a type of exchange program with poor rural schools. Such a system assists the poor schools and benefits Shanghai schools by allowing them to promote teachers and administrators.

In both Shanghai and Hong Kong, there is a clear awareness that education needs to transform to keep pace with the rate of change in society - and not just current change, but a conscious effort has been made to take into account the future of society, the economy, and education. This forward thinking mindset should influence the United States as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the law governing primary and secondary education, as the ten year old is about to be reauthorized.

........................................

This article is based on "Chapter 4: Shanghai and Hong Kong: Two Distinct Examples of Education Reform in China" in the publication, OECD (2010), Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States.

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Shanghai: The World's Best School System

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by Heather Singmaster China has a long tradition of respect for education. In fact, there is much societal and family pressure to do well academically. This has fostered education reform throughout history at many levels.

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Is China's school system really the best for students?

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Is China's school system really the best for students?

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China's education system is the envy of many Western governments, who are keen to replicate the nation's high test scores and levels of discipline in their own schools.

However, the realities of schooling in China, looking beyond the exam results of pupils, often prompt Western critics to say that they promote a narrow and limiting education for the country's children.

In a discussion on British and Chinese education on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores that rank global education, and have placed Chinese students (specifically those from Shanghai) at the top in recent years, were called into question.

"The only people who believe the PISA league tables are the BBC and the Department for Education," said journalist Simon Jenkins, in the discussion with Chinese journalist and author Xinran Xue.

"They're just rubbish," he continued. "You can do anything with 15-year-olds if you treat them like baby Communists. This isn't about education, it's about scoring."

The PISA tables seemingly tell us everything about the relative skills of teenagers around the world in reading, maths and sciences, and are commonly used to name the nations with the 'best' education systems.

However, they routinely face criticism, including claims that the tests ignore cultural backdrops to students' learning (such as the heavy pressure to perform placed on many Chinese pupils), neglect to take into account civic, artistic and moral development, and encourage short-term fixes such as rote learning that help nations and schools climb league tables, but don't necessarily provide education to students.

Xue pointed out the cultural differences at play in British and Chinese schools.

She said: "In China, when the students come to the classroom, you have to tell them you must learn something - it is your duty to the country, to the nation, to your family."

She said that in Britain, priorities are much different, with students being told to ask, "what's your future, what do you want for yourself?"

"That's a very different philosophy," she said.

She also explained that strong Chinese beliefs in family values and hierarchy also made their way into the classroom - saying that students are expected to respect their older peers, and that teachers are never to be questioned.

Underlining the essential cultural differences, Simon Jenkins said: "We tend to teach rebellion, disruption, invention," and have less emphasis on rote learning.

"If you line up 100 15-year-olds and drill maths into them for 12 hours a day, they'll come out with great results" - but not necessarily a good education, he said.

The short discussion came ahead of a new BBC 2 documentary, Are our kids tough enough? Chinese School, which begins on 4 August.

In the programme, five teachers from China take over the education of fifty teenagers at a Hampshire comprehensive school - in an effort to see whether the Chinese system of collective thinking, duty and strict learning can benefit English teenagers.

Past Education Secretaries like Michael Gove have encouraged schools to try and emulate the Chinese system - but with around a third of China's growing well-off middle class reportedly aspiring to send their children to the West for their education, it seems that good grades may not be the be-all and end-all of education.

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Is China's world-beating school system really the best for students?

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China's education system is the envy of many Western governments, who are keen to replicate the nation's high test scores and levels of discipline in their own schools. However, the realities of schooling in China, looking beyond the exam results of pupils, often prompt Western critics to say that they promote a narrow and limiting education for the country's children.

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China wants inventors and entrepreneurs, but its schools, built around the notorious gaokao exam, are still designed to produce cookie-cutter engineers and accountants.

On the morning of June 7 every year, Beijing's normally chaotic streets fall silent. Police patrol the main roads on motorcycles, as construction workers put down their hammers and power down their cranes, and rowdy taxi drivers finally take their hands off the horn. It is the first day of gaokao, the annual, nationwide college entrance exam, which will decide the college matriculation of the nine million or so students who take it. Sitting for nine hours over two days, students are tested on everything from Chinese and math to geography and government. The intense, memorization-heavy, and notoriously difficult gaokao can make the SAT look like a game of Scrabble. How they do on the test will play a big role in determining not just where they go to college but, because Chinese colleges often feed directly into certain industries and fields, what they do for the rest of their life. It's an enormously important moment in any Chinese student's life, which is part of why high schools here dedicate months or even years to preparing for the test.

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The Education System That Pulled China Up May Now Be Holding It Back

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China wants inventors and entrepreneurs, but its schools, built around the notorious gaokao exam, are still designed to produce cookie-cutter engineers and accountants. On the morning of June 7 every year, Beijing's normally chaotic streets fall silent.

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Why do many Chinese students choose US universities?

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Why do many Chinese students choose US universities?

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There are more than a quarter of a million students from China in colleges in the United States - a third of all international students in the country - and almost a fivefold increase since 2000. Why do so many now come to study in the US?

It is final exams week at the University of Illinois and students lucky enough to have finished their studies are lying on the grass of the quad, laughing with friends in the sunshine. It is an idyllic college scene.

Junfeng Guan is not one of the lucky ones - at least not yet. The 20-year-old, who goes by his English name Jayden, still has one more test to take and is heading to find a place to study, lugging a backpack full of books.

The electrical engineering student is not complaining. He has already overcome far bigger challenges since making the move from China to America's mid-west where the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is surrounded by farmland.

The rural setting was initially a huge culture shock for him. "The first time I went to Chicago I was going to cry... I'm so happy to get to a big city."

Rising numbers

Jayden's journey to study in the US is one that a staggering number of Chinese students are taking.

The most recent figures, from the 2013-14 academic year, show that 274,000 international students in the US hailed from China - far more than from any other country.

That was a 17% increase on the previous year and represented the tenth consecutive year of rising numbers.

At UIUC, the trend is noticeable. The school boasts the largest number of international students of any public higher education institution in the US, nearly 5,000 of whom are Chinese.

The typical overseas student has changed from being a "graduate student from Korea to being an undergrad from China", says Martin McFarlane, the university's associate director of international student and scholar services.

More stories from the BBC's Knowledge economy series looking at education from a global perspective and how to get in touch

The big shift in undergraduate applications is so significant that Mr McFarlane's office now organises three pre-arrival orientations in China to prepare incoming students and their parents on what to expect when arriving on campus.

More choice

Jayden chose the UIUC without ever having been to the US.

He turned down an offer at a Chinese university in Shanghai because a Western education offered him the freedom to choose his focus of study.

"I want to go where I can learn whatever I want", he explained.

That is representative of a number of Chinese students. They want to get out of a schooling system that uses test scores to determine the subjects students will take, which makes it difficult to change once these have been assigned.

UIUC's strong reputation in engineering ultimately determined his choice to come to the campus.

'One-child' generation

There are other non-academic factors fuelling the spike in students going to the US, such as the expansion of China's middle class and policies on families.

Charles Tucker, vice provost for Undergraduate Education and Innovation at UIUC, points out that "children who were born under the one-child policy are now of college-educated age... and changes in the Chinese economy have promoted individual wealth in families".

The wealth that enables Chinese families to pay the high prices of US degrees is also beneficial for university budgets.

International students at UIUC pay total costs of about $46,000 to $53,000, (£30,150 to £34,632) including tuition and accommodation.

Local students from Illinois pay about $30,000 to $35,000 (£20,000 to £23,000) and US students from outside the state pay about $46,000 to $51,000 (£30,150 to £33,000).

UIUC makes clear they do not accept international students purely for revenue generation reasons, and attribute the higher fees to added services.

US students from outside of the state pay more because their families are not subsidising the university the same way a local family would through tax-dollars.

Family savings

Xuran (Sherry) Peng, one of the students from China, says her parents had to use a large portion of their savings to send her to UIUC.

They believe it is an investment that will benefit her entire family, including her six-year-old half brother.

"I feel like it's part of my responsibility to earn the tuition for him, because my parents actually have the big wish that both of us can finish our education in the US and probably work in the US in the future," she says.

Sherry attended a traditional Chinese high school, but lived in the US with her family for two years when she was seven years old and has fond memories of that experience.

She says there were around 60 other students in her high school that also chose to come to the US for college.

"In China, there are also lots of international high schools where people are aiming to get into the top universities in the US," explains Sherry.

China has seen a rapid development of international schools in recent years, showing the country's growing demand for a Western-style education.

Such a convergence of eastern and western education is seen as preparing students for life after university.

And what does it mean for individuals?

"I feel a little more American now, but I still have a long way to go because if I want to make some American friends I need to practise my small talk and... overcome the culture gap," says Jayden.

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Why do so many Chinese students choose US universities?

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There are more than a quarter of a million students from China in colleges in the United States - a third of all international students in the country - and almost a fivefold increase since 2000. Why do so many now come to study in the US?

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China's path to achieve world-class education

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China's path to achieve world-class education

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China's Education Development and Policy, 1978-2008 (Modern)

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China's Education Development and Policy, 1978-2008 (Modern)

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Curriculum Reform in China : Changes and Challenges

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Curriculum Reform in China : Changes and Challenges

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In a stern directive issued last month, the party ordered schools to intensify efforts to promote "Chinese traditional and socialist culture" - a mix of party loyalty and patriotic pride in China's past. Under this new formulation, the party is presented less as a vanguard of proletarian revolution and more as a force for reviving China and restoring it to its rightful place as a world power.

But the demands have run into opposition, and even mockery, from some parents and educators, and not just the so-called tiger moms. Many see political indoctrination as an anachronism in an era when China's more than 181 million schoolchildren need a modern education in math, science and liberal arts to get ahead.

They complain that Mr. Xi, who is expected to strengthen his hold on power at a party meeting this month, is turning public education into a self-serving propaganda exercise. Some say the president seems more concerned about defending the party's legitimacy than educating the skilled work force that China needs to compete in the global economy.

Such frustrations recently came to a head in Zhejiang, a wealthy coastal province, where parents protested a decision by education officials to make traditional Chinese medicine a required course for fifth-grade students.

Deng Zhiguo, 40, a software programmer who has two children in primary schools there, said he worried that the changes would come at the expense of instruction in subjects like biology and chemistry.

"It's like learning Darwinism in the morning and creationism in the afternoon," he said. "How do you expect children to process that?"

Mr. Xi's campaign has also extended to universities, where officials have banned textbooks that promote "Western values" and punished professors for straying from the Communist line. Some scholars describe restrictions on free speech in the classroom as the most severe since the aftermath of the massacre around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Critics say Mr. Xi may be raising the volume in patriotic education for fear that the party's message is getting drowned out in younger generations immersed in social media and the internet. But he faces significant challenges. A study this year by Chinese and American researchers found that students appear to be tuning out shrill propaganda.

The study, based on the results of a 2010 national opinion survey, found that the "incessant ideological indoctrination by the Chinese government turns out to be counterproductive," with trust in the government actually falling among those who received higher levels of education.

Carl Minzner, an expert in Chinese law and governance at Fordham University in New York, said the party's socialist rhetoric had become "water-cooler banter and fodder for jokes" among educated Chinese.

"The party of revolution is now the party of the wealthy and powerful," he said. "They've got to stand for something. They're worried about the moral void at the core of Chinese society."

Mr. Xi has passionately defended his push for positively portraying China's past, chastising schools for removing ancient poems from the curriculum and calling traditional culture "part of the Chinese nation's blood and genes."

This fall, the Chinese Ministry of Education began rolling out new textbooks in history, language, law and ethics across primary and secondary schools. The new books include studies of 40 revolutionary heroes, writings by revolutionary leader Mao Zedong like his 1944 speech " Serve the People" and lessons on China's territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea, a pillar of Mr. Xi's foreign policy.

Anti-Japanese sentiment also features prominently, part of Mr. Xi's efforts to glorify the early days of the party and its role in defending China from foreign invaders. A second-grade lesson tells the story of the "little hero" Wang Erxiao, a 13-year-old cattle herder who is said to have died in 1942 while trying to protect the offices of a Communist newspaper from Japanese soldiers.

Experts say the party is seeking ways to justify its hold on power in an era when its founding goal of proletarian revolution no longer seems relevant. While Mr. Xi is hardly the first Chinese leader to turn to patriotism as a substitute, he has pushed a version that plays up the party's role as a force for restoring China's greatness.

"The party's theories lack vitality and innovation," said Zhang Lifan, a historian in Beijing and a frequent critic of the party, "so the only thing they can do is to try to use the past to seize the next generation."

The government has set up 231 so-called Red Army schools as models for its approach. One is Ms. Xie's Workers and Peasants Red Army Elementary School, located in Yuqing County near the site of a former Communist revolutionary base in Guizhou, a mountainous southern province.

The school's curriculum recounts the experience of Mao's soldiers during the early years of the revolution, who are portrayed as heroically fighting to free China from rapacious warlords and Japanese invaders. As at some Red Army schools, students wear military uniforms around campus; in Ms. Xie's classroom, that is a privilege reserved for the best students.

Even math classes are infused with party history. Students are asked such questions as calculating the distance of the Long March, Mao's epic 1934-36 retreat across China. (The answer is about 6,000 miles.)

Teachers tell students that loyalty to the party can help them overcome personal difficulties and live a meaningful life.

"While other countries are suffering from war and people are still starving in Africa," Ms. Xie said during a recent lesson on perseverance, "please don't forget the sacrifices made by the Red Army soldiers."

Mr. Xi, himself the son of a Communist revolutionary, has hailed Red Army schools as a model for the nation. He and his mother, Qi Xin, have given the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to the schools, records show. A Red Army school in northwestern China is also named for Mr. Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun.

The party sees the schools, which serve tens of thousands of students in its former revolutionary bases in 28 provinces, as charity projects that help the most disadvantaged children.

While the patriotic appeals have found fertile ground among working-class Chinese hungry for a sense of pride, some experts warn that placing too much emphasis on nationalistic education has its own risks.

Jiang Xueqin, an education consultant in Beijing, said fanning national pride could quickly "mutate into a fierce and militant nationalism" that is difficult to control.

Mr. Xi's vision of patriotic education is already in full bloom at the Workers and Peasants Red Army Elementary School, which was founded in 1788 but only became a Red Army school in 2012.

Classes begin with Red Army songs, and students take turns reciting revolutionary stories featuring Japanese spies as villains.

"The blood in the past gave us the life we have today," said Kuang Yanli, 11, a sixth-grade student. "A lot of other countries want to invade our country again, so we have to study hard and make sure that doesn't happen."

Local officials are sensitive to the idea that the school is indoctrinating students, and the police blocked journalists from The New York Times from reporting after being alerted to their presence.

Mr. Xi himself has also become a part of the curriculum. Several times a week, the school's more than 1,400 students line up in the cement-paved courtyard to sing an ode to Mr. Xi's signature phrase, the "Chinese dream":

Chinese dream for 1,000 years,
Chinese dream for 100 years,
The dream carries on, the dream embraces all,
For the revival of China, for the revival of China!

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To Inspire Young Communists, China Turns to 'Red Army' Schools

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In a stern directive issued last month, the party ordered schools to intensify efforts to promote "Chinese traditional and socialist culture" - a mix of party loyalty and patriotic pride in China's past. Under this new formulation, the party is presented less as a vanguard of proletarian revolution and more as a force for reviving China and restoring it to its rightful place as a world power.

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Education and Social Change in China: Inequality in a Market Economy

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Education and Social Change in China: Inequality in a Market Economy

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Youth and Education in China (Modern + Past)

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Youth and Education in China (Modern + Past)

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could be during communist era