Run by others: school autonomy in Shanghai’s entrustment management reform

ABSTRACT

The promotion of school-to-school collaboration and school autonomy has popularized in the global trends of school system reform over the past few decades. This article examines the Shanghai experience by specifically taking the entrustment management reform as an illustrative example. Since 2007, the government has contracted ‘good’ schools in urban districts and private non-profit educational organizations to manage a group of relatively ‘weak’ schools in rural districts. Three ‘weak’ schools and their entrusted bodies were investigated in this study to elaborate the nature and structure of school autonomy in the new hierarchical management system. This article argues that rather than leading to substantial redistribution of the autonomy between the government and the school as stated, the reform has reconstructed the school leadership. A kind of ‘one-side-collaboration’ has emerged in ‘weak’ schools’ decision-making processes, which has in effect decreased their autonomy. Nevertheless, the reform has generally proceeded smoothly. This can be articulated through understanding Confucian moral and interrelated autonomy, in contrast to the Western autonomy premised on egoism and rationality and emphasizing the self-other tension, and in China’s political and bureaucratic contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Shanghai
• school autonomy
• school-to-school collaboration
• school management
• entrustment management reform

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Yang Xiaowei and Zhu Li for their kind help during the data collection and inspiring discussions about Shanghai’s school-to-school collaboration reforms. For valuable suggestions, many thanks to Qian Haiyan and two anonymous reviewers. Any omissions or errors are my responsibility alone. Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There are no official definitions of ‘weak’ schools. As Ding (2012, p. 148) notes, according to the Ministry of Education, ‘weak’ schools are mainly ‘bad administrated, have low academic quality and low social reputation for various reasons, such as poor material conditions, weak educational leadership, and unsatisfactory teaching stuff’.

2. Both the Western and Chinese understandings of autonomy have been employed in this article to analyse school autonomy in the Chinese context. On the one hand, the Chinese educational system has been modernized/Westernized since the early 20^th century; on the other, the modernization/Westernization has intertwined with China’s cultural, political and bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, rather than moving beyond.

3. The ‘promotion tournament model’ is proposed by Zhou (2007), which elaborates the means used by the central government to guarantee local officials to meet the central goals and follow the central rules on which the competition for career advancement rest. Building upon this model, Zhou et al. (2013. p. 147) argue that ‘tournament-competition-like practice’ adopted by the Chinese government functions as ‘a command mechanism which higher authorities use to impose their will’.

4. For Agencies A and B, the reform offered a chance to promote their educational ideas and experiences (Manager H and L). As an ‘Experimental and Model High School’ (shiyanxing shifanxing gaozhong), School C is regularly evaluated by MEC in terms of ‘expending advanced experience and helping improve the performance of “weak” schools’ (Principal C).

5. Albeit crucial, the Chinese traditional authority culture and political pressure are not always sufficient to explain the full implementation of policy. There have been cases that the lower authority or schools resorting to the tactics of paying lip service (e.g. Ding, 2012), as long as not openly confronting or contradicting the authority (Qian & Walker, 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Post-doctoral Research Fund [14101-412126-17009].

Notes on contributors

Yun You

Yun You completed her PhD at the Institute of Education, University College London and is currently an associate professorat East China Normal University. She is also the assistant editor ofECNU Review of Education. Her research interests include destructing the Western dominant construction, representation and referencing of East Asian education, and moving further, elaborating Chinese educational ideas and practices from sui generis onto-epistemological lenses and amid the interplay of socio-politics and culture.