ABSTRACT
This book examines contemporary rural education in China through a number of age ranges including pre-school, primary, junior and senior middle school, and vocational schools. It provides a picture of the impressive, albeit uneven, progress of education in the countryside while acknowledging that many changes still need to be made. It presents many ideas from those closely involved in the practical aspect of the development of education. It also demonstrates improvement, and often successes, while also illustrating the challenges and tensions that lie ahead. The different chapters have provided accounts of some of the transformations taking place in a representative selection of educational institutions across Xingwen County. It is ‘representative’ in the sense that what follows in this section offers an account of changes and developments. It also shows how state education policies and county development programmes play out within individual educational institutions. While the circumstances of Xingwen are typical, this study does not claim that Xingwen is representative of counties as a whole because local traditions and circumstances very much in different areas. However, the people and things related to education in Xingwen County do illustrate how counties, in particular the economically and socially underdeveloped areas, have struggled and adapted to the reform and change in the education.
This last chapter consists of four parts. The first and second focus on teacher supply and quality in the county. The third part reviews the development of education in the county against the background of national development since the 1950s. Based on this, it discusses the educational connection between the past and the future. The final part concludes this study.
