What is the significance of providing degree subsidies to private schools?

Recently, some Shenzhen-born or non-Shenzhen-born families with residence permits studying in private primary and secondary schools in Shenzhen have begun to apply for degree subsidies in 2018. As early as 2012, Shenzhen began to provide degree subsidies to students who meet the city's free compulsory education conditions to attend private schools. In 2017, the subsidy standard was raised to a maximum of 7,000 yuan per student per year for primary schools and 9,000 yuan per year for junior high schools.

Compulsory education is a basic public service in the city, and providing compulsory education requires costs. Earlier, local governments used household registration as an identification tool and only provided services to school-age children with household registration in the city. After the labor force migrates across regions, a large number of non-registered people have become permanent residents in cities. How to provide compulsory education to migrant children (also known as migrant children) has become a problem.

Shanghai is the first big city in China to start relevant practices. It launched a three-year action plan in 2008 to significantly lower the threshold for migrant children to receive compulsory education in Shanghai. It was once the first domestic city to solve the problem of migrant children receiving compulsory education. Educational role model. Since the capacity of traditional public schools is designed based on the registered population, migrant children will be admitted to study in Shanghai in the short term, and public schools will not be able to accommodate new students for the time being. Shanghai has adopted the method of purchasing places from private primary and secondary schools and providing them to migrant children. The subsidy for each degree has gradually increased to 5,000 yuan, which is currently 6,000 yuan.

As an immigrant city, Shenzhen’s registered population accounts for a much lower proportion of the permanent population than Shanghai, and the capacity of public primary schools is even smaller. Compared with Shanghai, a higher proportion of migrant children attend private primary schools. According to data from the "China Migrant Children Education Development Report (2016)", in 2015, there were 785,800 migrant children in compulsory education in Shenzhen, accounting for 69.54 of all enrolled students, of which only 36.29 were in public schools. Only 46.18% of the migrant children are migrant children, and the rest are studying in private schools.

Although private primary and secondary schools have high-quality schools with high fees, the overall education quality of private primary and secondary schools is significantly different from that of public primary and secondary schools. The core reason is the gap in per-student education funding, and the per-student education funding One of the important sources of the gap is the gap in government financial investment.

For example, in 2015, the total education funding revenue of ordinary primary schools (mainly public primary schools) directly managed by local education and other departments across the country was 933.2 billion, of which came from finance (including public finance, Government funds, etc.) is 925 billion, accounting for 99.13% of the total funding revenue. After conversion, the fiscal investment per student is nearly 10,000 yuan. For private ordinary primary schools, the total education funding revenue is 45.65 billion, of which only 8.55 billion comes from the government, accounting for 18.72%. The average education funding per student is only 6,400 yuan, only 60% of that of public primary schools, of which the fiscal investment per student is only 1197 yuan.

The government purchases places from private schools to meet the compulsory education needs of school-age children. This has two benefits: First, when public education is limited by staffing and other factors and cannot quickly increase supply, private education can increase supply in a timely manner. Meet the needs of migrant children for compulsory education; secondly, government purchase may reduce family tuition expenditures, but it will most likely increase the scale of per-student education expenditures, make up for the gap in per-student education expenditures between private and public schools, and thereby promote equalization of education .

In addition, this policy can also promote competition among private schools, thereby improving the quality of education. For example, compared with Shanghai, Shenzhen’s policy is closer to the education voucher system. The education department has very little intervention in families’ choice of private schools. When families and the schools they choose are both on the catalog, families can receive subsidies. Private schools in the catalog are bound to compete for this purpose, thereby improving the quality of education and achieving the same education quality as public schools with less funding, which in turn encourages public schools to improve efficiency. This model is worth learning from other cities.