Guided tour [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

In the past decade, China has spent a lot on education. For instance, it has extended the free primary-school and middle-school education scheme from rural areas to urban areas. Also, Chinese students tend to perform very well at international competitions. However, some experts say China's exam-oriented education system curbs students' creativity while others praise it for its efficiency. Within the country, China's education system is often criticized for its unequal distribution of education resources, exam-oriented system and not-so-good teachers' salaries. The question is: How can Chinese authorities improve the education system?

At the 2009 annual session of the National People's Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated his commitment to educational development and the five principles outlined in the Guidelines of China's National Educational Development Plan (2010-2020): prioritizing development, nurturing people as the starting point, carrying out reform and innovation, promoting equity and improving quality.

Reforms of examination and enrolment systems, along with strengthening of the teaching force, were also specified. One area of international research that could help achieve these goals is educational effectiveness and improvement. The research recognizes different levels in an education system - student, classroom, department, region or local authority, national as well the school levels - and how a variety of factors at these levels can influence students' achievements and progress.

Importantly, its emphasis is on education outcomes, together with how these are influenced by expenditure on education, contextual factors and learning and teaching processes. This evidence has been used to design programs for improving educational quality in different settings. Drawing on this evidence, researchers have attempted to summarize "what works" in terms of promoting rapid increases in schooling outcomes in the context of different countries.

But crude comparative approaches often don't go far enough in recognizing educational priorities, cultures and challenges faced in different countries.

Some educational goals may arguably be universal, but more effort is needed to strive for, define and measure educational quality outcomes that reflect local priorities and circumstances, despite pressure to create globally recognized "one-size-fits-all" student assessment systems such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment.

As China and the world reflect on the excellent performance of Chinese students in PISA tests, locally it is recognized that opportunity and resources have played a significant role in these achievements. Therefore, evidence from local studies on educational quality and assessment practices is urgently needed to address more adequately the contextual and other limitations of international comparative surveys.

Moreover, the situation is changing rapidly. For example, some parents, typically the affluent ones, are increasingly active in adding to the educational advantages of their children, both inside and outside schools, potentially widening the attainment gap between richer and poorer students year by year.

Therefore, the negative consequences for education quality that may result from the existence of educational markets in China, especially ones that are based on the ability to pay, are only just starting to be understood. In addressing the goal of equity as well as quality in education, it is clear that the use of resources by individuals as well as governments needs to be seriously considered. Otherwise, it could lead to unexpected and unwelcome consequences.

So what are the potential solutions to this dilemma? They are likely to be numerous, because China has such complex and varied environments. On equity, China first needs to review carefully the extent to which individuals are able or likely to use their own resources, if a market exists, to promote their own educational advantages over and above any collective benefit for all and develop policies that take into account this basic issue.

A renewed and single-minded focus on teachers' development is also needed because there's no doubt that teachers' quality is one of the major levers to improve educational quality, equity and effectiveness. A recent research project on teachers' professional learning communities funded by UKAID found that, not surprisingly, in some Chinese regions the opportunities and training needs reported by teachers are considerably greater than those in other regions. Even more critical is the fact that in all regions surveyed, but most often in the poorer regions, teachers quite frequently have no option but to pay themselves to receive the professional development training they seek.

Again this situation suggests that the ability and willingness of an individual to pay - this time the teacher - is likely to influence student outcomes and potentially increase further the performance gap between poorer and richer areas. Therefore, a key priority for a significant proportion of the increased - 4 percent of GDP - education funding in China should be to ensure that all teachers and especially those in poorer rural areas have the knowledge and skills they need to promote student learning.

Also, local funding for education research needs to be increased, for example, to examine more broadly and in more regions the important role of context, assessment practices and teacher development in China, because this will be vital for monitoring and informing the new reforms seeking to promote equity and improve quality.

The author is a professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol in the UK.