Reconstruction of Modernized Education Governance: Chinese Experiences and Future Search

Education governance refers to “the structures, processes, and activities involved in the planning and direction of the institutions and people working in…education” (Yang 2020, 188). It is not only about the practices of education administration, management, and leadership, but also the mechanisms to ensure educational quality, equality, and justice. Thus, governments across the globe have strived for improving their education governance capability by reforming and restructuring the governance systems of education (Monkevicius and Urbanovic 2017). In numerous Western and developed countries like the US and the UK, the approach of so-called educational decentralization is employed to strengthen education governance, because it is believed that delegating greater authority to schools helps them effectively and efficiently respond diverse needs of stakeholders at local communities (Bray 1999). In order to avoid schools abuse the delegated authority, the governments have attempted to hold them accountable by a variety of managerial measures like performance indicators, league table, external review, parent choice, and the like (Ball 1994; Boyd 2005; Lee, Kwan, and Li 2019; Mok and Welch 2002; Simkins 2000). Therefore, it seems that schools have greater authority in self-management and operation, they do not enjoy greater autonomy due to the external accountability measures. Such an educational governance is what Watkins (1993) calls centralized decentralization or what Mok (2003) calls centralization of decentralization. On the other hand, other researchers note that educational decentralization may not produce and reproduce the asymmetric relationships between schools and the government, because they find that educational decentralization create spaces for stakeholders to participate in and influence education policy process at all levels (Monkevicius and Urbanovic 2017). As a result, the governments need collaborate with them to steer education systems in and via policy networks in which the governments and all stakeholders, including schools, are relatively independent and reciprocal (Edwards and Klees 2015). The researchers generally name such a pattern of education governance as network governance (Chan and Wang 2022).

Similar to its Western counterparts, China has been enthusiastic to improve its education governance system and capability (Su, Tsang, and Sun 2022). In 2013, the Third Plenary Session of the 18^th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) put forward an important proposition to promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. After that, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19^th Central Committee of the CPC further published Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Adhering to and Improving the Socialist System with Chinese Characteristics and Promoting the Modernization of the National Governance System and Governance Capability, which regarded promoting the modernization of the national governance system and the modernization of governance capabilities as an important task and goal for the reform of national governance in the future. Since then, it has also started a journey to promote the modernization and reform of the education governance system and governance capacity. Since the 18^th CPC National Congress, the Chinese government at all levels has been committed to the reform of education governance. The central government has made great efforts to raise educational legality construction, pushed forward the enactment of the law on preschool education and the law on family education, and revised several laws such as the Law of Promoting Civilian-run Education and the Compulsory Education Law. The central government actively promotes the separation of power on administration, school-running, and evaluation, allows the third parties to participate in the process of educational evaluation, and allocates educational management power more reasonably. Meanwhile, the local governments actively promote the local education legal system construction, implements the collectivized school-running and the school district system reform, and improves the regional internal education governance structure. Schools actively strengthen the constitution construction, exert the function of the staff congress in governance, and promote the leadership pattern reform. Moreover, in 2020, the Ministry of Education launched the compilation of the Education Development Plan in the 14th Five Year Plan, setting the modernization of the education governance system and capabilities as an important theme. It means that the modernization of the education governance system and capabilities will be further advanced.

To some extent, the Chinese government’s initiatives of modernizing its education governance may replicate the patterns of education governance reforms, like centralized decentralization (Hawkins 2000) and/or network governance (Tao 2022), in the Western societies. Nevertheless, it does not mean we can unconditionally apply those theories developed from the Western societies to understand Chinese education governance. As Yang (2020) suggests, a nation’s education governance system is inextricably related to its social, political, and cultural contexts. Therefore, we need pay attention to the Chinese social, political, and cultural influences on education governance and/or put Chinese education governance into the contexts while analyzing and theorizing (Chan 2019). For example, China has decentralized its public sectors (Burns 2000), including education (Ngok 2007) and provided greater space for social participations in education governance (Tao 2022) since the 1980s. Therefore, researches have suggested that China’s education governance replicates the patterns of the Western network governance (Liu 2015; Tao 2022). Nevertheless, if we take the social and political system of China into consideration, we may find that the nature or the mechanism of Chinese education governance is different from the Western. According to Tsang (2009), the political system of China is influenced by consultative Leninism that emphasizes enlightened party-leadership to enforce social and economic solidarity. Thus, the government may delegate autonomy and authority to patriotic citizens to participate into education governance or influence education policies based on socialist rule of law that aims to maintain the supremacy of party-leadership (H. Zhu and Peters 2019). In other words, the so-called Chinese network governance may not emphasize equal power relation and independence between the state and non-sate actors, but value the subordinate and submissive position of non-state actors in policy networks (Han and Ye 2017). Thus, as Chan (2019) observes non-state actors generally are powerless to negotiate with the state actors about policy agenda. Nevertheless, it does not mean the non-state actors cannot influence the state actors. They may do that indirectly, such as using their personal relationships with the state actors and showing their expertise and professionalism in a policy area, to convince the state actors that they are capable and willing to assist them in accomplishing its policy goals (Fulda, Li, and Song 2012; Teets 2018; Zheng, Jong, and Koppenjan 2010; X. Zhu 2013). In this sense, the China government, similar to the Western, may apply network approach to govern education system but the network approach of governance may be slightly different from the Western form of network governance (Chan 2019; Tao and Liu 2022).

Accordingly, examining Chinese education governance may not only provide us a better understanding of Chinese education, but also the insights to advance and even revise existing Western perspectives and theories of education governance. Thus, this special issue, on the theme of Reconstruction of Modernized Education Governance: Chinese Experiences and Future Search, aims to investigate the patterns of Chinese education governance and its implications by taking the social, political, and cultural contexts of China into consideration. In this special issue, there are 8 articles covering a verity of topics regarding Chinese education governance, including the reforms on the internal governance structure of primary and secondary schools (Su, Fang & Si’s article), the trajectory of Chinese School District System policy (Zhu & Liu’s article), the challenges of Chinese school governance modernization (Zhao, Zhou & Wang’s article), the power structure of primary and secondary school governance (Chu & Li’s article), the negotiation between stakeholders during education governance process (Lin, Chan & Xie’s article), third-party actors’ participation in governance for school turnaround (Tao’s article), the functions of the Chinese Communist Party Schools in teacher professional development (Zhou & Zhang’s article), and home-school cooperation (Zhang’s article). Each article does not only provide an in-deep analysis of a particular issue of education governance in China, but also give us insights to make reconstruct and advance our understandings of modernized education governance in China, and non-Western societies in general.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Junyang Su

Junyang Su is a Professor at College of Educational Administration, Beijing Normal University.

Kwok Kuen Tsang

Kwok Kuen Tsang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong.