ABSTRACT
Propelled by the power of globalisation, China has enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom since the Open-Door Policy in 1978 (Schulte, 2012) and became the second-largest economy in the world in 2010. Since the time of Confucius, Chinese society has deeply valued the importance of education (Hua, Harris and Ollin, 2011; Hui et al., 2011; Lee and Mak, 2010; UNESCO, 2013). Consequently, China’s education system has benefited from increased investment as the economy has grown (National Bureau of Statistics of China [NBSC], 2014, online).
In 2012 China shocked the educational world by leading in every aspect of the PISA international assessment (Smither, 2013). China recognises that new policies and innovative moves are required to maintain its high economic and educational performance (Ministry of Education (MOE) of People’s Republic of China 中华人民共和国教育部, 2014a, 2014b). China’s economic rise has been fuelled by having the largest population of migrant workers from rural to urban areas (Schulte, 2012), these workers providing low-cost labour (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2013). However, in recent years the consequences of the 35-year-old one-child policy are beginning to impact on the number of low-cost workers available to resource an ever-growing manufacturing economy (Foester, 2015, online; Zhao, 2014). This has led to the Chinese government abandoning the one-child policy (Yi, 2010; BBC, 2015, 2016a).
