Large numbers of parents in rural areas are choosing to take their children out of school once their chances to get into university are deemed too small. Calling it “the most pressing problem facing China’s rural education,” Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, attributes it to China’s degree-oriented educational system in an article for
The Paper.
Despite the government’s offer of free vocational education to allow more rural teenagers to continue their education, according to Xiong, many choose to give up the chance since it doesn’t lead to a college degree. Parents still believe that to enter a regular a high school and then a university is the only possible way to change their children’s destiny, Xiong said.
It’s the government’s primary task to improve the quality of vocational education and make it more attractive to rural students, Xiong noted. This will require the government to cancel discriminative policies in education and remove the existing hierarchy of schools, the scholar said, adding that this is a problem of not just for rural education but China’s education system as a whole.
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