On the benefit of running a school

On the benefit of running a school: Shi Xinggang

Starting from the great assertion that science and technology are productive forces, education, as the "machine tool" of science and technology, has gradually moved from "metaphysics" to "metaphysics" in theory and practice, realizing a "soft landing" from a pure superstructure to a utilitarian industry. Its function has also changed from "political vassal" or "economic handmaid" to cultural function and scientific and technological function. As a result, more and more realistic theories and irreversible reform practices have introduced the concept of "benefit" into politics, law, culture, science and technology, education and other fields, which has triggered countless theoretical debates and practical explorations on the benefits of running schools. Theoretical circles have tried to "upgrade" education into productivity after science and technology "advanced" into productivity. Then, in the early 1990s, the industrial division of labor once again put forward the proposition whether education is an industry. This discussion is accompanied by drastic educational reform, and theory and practice are mutually confirmed, reaching an understanding of the "industry" of education. As early as 1935, Fisher, a British professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, put forward the concept of the tertiary industry in his Conflict between Security and Progress. After World War II, the world generally adopted three industrial divisions. 1985 The National Bureau of Statistics formally defines four levels of the tertiary industry, among which the third level is the department that improves the scientific and cultural level and the quality of residents, including institutions such as education, culture, science and technology in the traditional sense. In 1970s, many countries in the world began to realize the transformation of education from occupation to industry. In Germany, education investment has long been included in productive investment; In the United States, education is called the first export commodity with billions of dollars in foreign exchange. Nowadays, the education of "using a certain amount of manpower, financial resources and material resources to achieve greater output of manpower, financial resources and material resources" has been included in China's "tertiary industry focus with overall and leading influence on national economic development". As an industry, of course, we should pay attention to the "benefit" of input-output ratio. Under the condition of socialist market economy, education cannot be divorced from political and economic systems, but must be isomorphic with them. The market economy has produced and created the subjectivity of interests, making social units an interest entity with unified responsibilities and rights, and the school has restored its subjectivity and become a school-running entity with legal personality. Diversification of educational investment, diversification of school-running system, compensation of educational services, etc. Require the principal to pay attention to teaching and funds, "both hands should be hard"; The school is required to calculate the cost, improve the quality and win the maximum output with the least input. Therefore, "school-running efficiency" has replaced "education quality" as the final standard to evaluate the level of running a school.

In fact, the concept of school-running benefits directly comes from the waste of large-scale education in poor countries. According to statistics of 1990 in Gansu province, the average class size of primary schools is less than 4, the number of students is less than 100, the teacher-student ratio is too low, the number of teachers is more than 40,000, and the average annual expenditure is more than 70 million yuan, which is a scale waste. The number of college students in Shandong Province has increased from 199 1 to 1994, with an increase of 49.4%, resulting in a surplus of graduates and a rapid expansion of the scale of ordinary high schools, resulting in structural imbalance, which is a kind of structural waste. In China, 20% of the instruments and equipment are idle, and the utilization rate of classrooms and laboratories is only 60%. In some colleges and universities in Zhongguancun area, 40% of large-scale equipment with more than 50,000 yuan is not turned on, which is a waste of resources. In the past three years, students in a county in Sichuan 14 15 failed to repeat the grade, and 707 students dropped out of school, wasting the manpower of 150 people, 800,000 yuan, which is a repeated waste. In addition, one-sided pursuit of systematic waste without actual demand; The mode of running a school is single, and thousands of troops cross the wooden bridge, resulting in a waste of both talents and talents; Institutional waste of improper system and overstaffed organization; Management confusion, inefficient mechanism waste and so on. All these are equally important to China, where China supports one fifth of the educated with one percent of its education funds. scale economy

The rapid expansion of education scale in developing countries is a worldwide phenomenon in the middle and late period of this century. During the 20 years from 1970s to 1990s, the number of formal education students at all levels in the Asia-Pacific region soared from 388 million to 637 million. Inconsistent with this, the percentage of education expenditure in GNP in developing countries is almost below 4%, and the lowest is only 1. 1%. In developing countries, where the total amount of education accounts for three quarters of the world, the expenditure on education accounts for only one eighth of the world. Therefore, no matter how much the West emphasizes the rationality of small class teaching, the East still praises Comenius's "one teacher can teach 300 students at the same time", which has universal function. According to the Education Development Bulletin of the State Education Commission 1995, the average size of primary schools in China is 197.3, junior high schools are 689 and senior high schools are 53 1. According to the standard of 1: 26, there are 660,000 primary school teachers and 480,000 middle school teachers according to the standard of 1: 20. The annual salary of each teacher is 3,000 yuan, and the annual salary is 3 1 100 million yuan. However, according to the class size of 30 people, the ratio of 2.2 teachers per class is still short of about 3 million teachers, which is only a waste of manpower. That is to say, according to the minimum 6 sets of supporting standards, how many sets of scattered primary and secondary schools should be equipped, let alone standardized and standardized construction. Decentralized distribution, small scale, low efficiency and great waste are the biggest obstacles to realize the two fundamental changes in education. Therefore, overall planning, rational layout, increasing scale, improving investment efficiency and improving school conditions have become the main theme of current education reform. Shandong province took the lead in adjusting the layout of primary and secondary schools in the province 1995. The distribution principle is: high schools and vocational high schools are generally located in counties, junior high schools are located in towns, and village-run primary schools are merged within 1 km. The smallest scale is: middle school 18 class (24 classes in four-year system), 5 classes in township central primary school, and vocational and technical school 12 class. The minimum class size is 40. Binzhou City, Shandong Province took the lead in setting an example and achieved remarkable results. During the period of 1995, Binzhou city adjusted 77 primary and secondary schools to 63, and 4 normal schools to 2, saving 60 million yuan in school building renovation alone. The number of rural junior high schools was adjusted from 280 to 180, and the number of primary schools was adjusted from 4654 to 1280, saving nearly 100 million yuan in investment. The average size of the school reached 734.84, saving teachers 1.86 thousand, saving 58 million yuan a year, reducing the number of multi-class students by 32%, and the course opening rate reached 1.000% at once. At the beginning of launching the "Modern Education Project" in relatively developed Jiangsu Province, under the principle of "urban and rural integration and overall planning" and taking "town compulsory education and county secondary education" as the basic framework, we merged, merged and combined classes, increased capacity, expanded scale, concentrated people, finances and materials, and quickly realized the modernization of school conditions. In Suzhou alone, 1484 primary and secondary schools were cut down, and a Jiangnan university in Wuxi set up branches in three counties and one island under its jurisdiction, which is compatible with vocational high schools, adult education and ordinary colleges and universities, forming a community university with large coverage and diversified functions. It can be said that without large-scale school running, even an economic province like Jiangsu can't realize the first goal of the educational modernization project-the modernization of school conditions in a short time.

Structural benefits

The measure to test whether the educational structure is reasonable is to see whether it meets the needs of social and economic development for education. In this regard, the principles we implement are: harmonious development and moderate advance. The education in the period of great development is often a structural waste caused by the imbalance of various educational structures. As an important part of higher education, adult higher education has occupied half of the whole higher education, and its students account for 49.45% of the students in higher education. Is this share reasonable? According to the statistics of 1992, the average size of 25 1 colleges of education in China is only about 290 students, and the teacher-student ratio is surprisingly low, but the average area of students is surprisingly high (the teacher-student ratio of colleges of education is only 1: 4.26, and that of management cadres colleges is 1: 3.63, and the average area of students is as high as 245. Resulting in idleness and waste of teachers, land, school buildings and equipment. At the same time, colleges of adult education have been set up in colleges and universities, and various departments have also set up adult education business. The repeated setting of majors is even more amazing, and the benefits are impossible to talk about. The rise and fall of any link in the overall structure of education may lead to the imbalance of the whole structure. The scale of secondary specialized schools in Sichuan Province once expanded, which led to the decline of the number of college students for three consecutive years. At present, the secondary professional education is ambiguous: for example, the inexplicable differences between vocational high schools, technical schools and secondary schools in enrollment, academic system, distribution and treatment, and the specious differences between vocational high schools and secondary schools in academic system and courses make secondary professional education hot yesterday, which also leads to the shortage of students and the difficulty in choosing a job today. During the Eighth Five-Year Plan period in Shandong Province, higher education expanded rapidly with an annual growth rate of 14.3%, which not only led to the decline of school conditions and the difficulty in allocating graduates, but also stimulated the surge in the scale of ordinary high schools, and the focus of the whole education was high, and all kinds of waste were inevitable. One-sided pursuit of the integrity of the education system, divorced from local actual needs, is an important factor causing waste and declining benefits. For example, secondary vocational and technical education and ordinary high school education have a standard of 6: 4, but the economic and social development of different places is very different, and different interests are needed. The result of blind pursuit of proportion is that a large number of vocational high schools are in name only. At present, the state has put forward four modes of running ordinary high schools. It is worth paying attention to: will those who are not clear about the edge of vocational high schools in various modes of running ordinary high schools have an impact on the newly developed vocational high schools with unstable foundations? We should be wary of creating new structural imbalances.

(3) Resource efficiency

The optimal allocation, full utilization and sustainable development of educational resources are the three most direct and effective factors to improve the efficiency of running a school, and it is a revolutionary impact on the current practice of fragmentation, self-contained, large and comprehensive, small and comprehensive. The standardized school standards in a province clearly require that the school must have independent laboratories, instrument rooms, libraries, reading rooms for teachers and students, computer rooms, language labs, moral education classrooms and professional classrooms for music, fine arts, calligraphy, history, geography and electricity. In addition, there must be a wooden floor with a usable area of not less than 360m2 and a clear height of more than 6m, a teacher's office, a men's and women's locker room, etc. After the decision of "2 1 1 Project" was issued by the State Education Commission, colleges and universities are gearing up and taking the oath one after another, and it is inevitable to repeat the same mistakes. There are two self-contained medical schools in Jinan. The result is two primary schools and two brigades. The full-time teachers in the two schools are only 1 13 1, while the administrative staff are as high as 167 1. People can't make the best use of everything, they make the best use of their talents. Correspondingly, only Stockholm, Sweden has an audio-visual education center in the world to meet the audio-visual education needs of primary and secondary schools in the city. With community education facilities in Japan, schools no longer use "little sparrows" that are all in good order. Resource sharing and coordinated development are important principles of running a school to avoid waste under the principle of efficiency. Fortunately, there have been many useful attempts in this respect, and the establishment of "Shanghai Normal Education Group" is one example. In Shanghai, East China Normal University, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai Institute of Education, the Second Institute of Education, Shanghai Normal University, Preschool Teachers College, and the education colleges and teachers' colleges in various districts have repeated school-running levels and professional settings, competing for students and repeating investments, and the overall benefits are not good. After the establishment of the normal education group headed by East China Normal University, it will coordinate the level of running a school, adjust the specialty setting, properly concentrate its advantages, enjoy and develop resources as a whole and strive to improve the efficiency of running a school.

(4) Management benefits

"Seeking benefits from management" is not only one aspect of management methods, but also not only dealing with people, money and things. Internal friction and inefficiency mainly lie in system, system and mechanism. The reform is basically based on the principal responsibility system and revolves around such a theme-compressing levels and reducing clues. In view of the disadvantages of "division of labor responsibility system", Shenzhen experimental middle school implemented the reform of "division of labor assistant system" The first is to abolish the vice principal and replace it with the assistant principal, who is responsible for a temporary or long-term task or work according to the temporary assignment or long-term entrustment of the principal. The middle level directly faces the headmaster, which reduces the link of "in charge" and avoids the phenomenon of fragmentation, departmentalism and buck passing. Compared with Shenzhen Experimental Middle School, Beijing 1 19 Middle School goes further. She directly abolished the middle level and implemented two levels of management: the principal and the teaching and research group. At the same time, it gives the teaching and research group real power such as people, money and materials. As a result of the reform, government decrees are unblocked and efficiency is greatly improved. At present, it is recognized that Yangpu Economic and Technological Development Zone in Hainan Province has the strongest reform, the most prominent effect and the integrity in one step. According to the system reform principle of "statutory organization, trusteeship system and separation of government affairs" in the development zone, the Social Development Bureau of the development zone is in charge of education and has only one post (another secretary). Compared with dozens or even hundreds of educational institutions at the same level in China, it can be said that it is refined and refined. How can a person manage such a huge education? The method is "separation of government and business": all matters related to teacher recruitment, salary distribution, personnel appointment and dismissal, rewarding the excellent and punishing the poor are handled by the school itself, which means that the right to run a school belongs to the school. Such as teacher qualifications, school establishment, total salary, principal selection, etc., are all sponsored by the government. Others, such as teacher assessment, evaluation and acceptance, business guidance, etc. , are carried out by "statutory bodies". The school has only one principal, an assistant principal, a department head and a general affairs director, which is simple and efficient. After the establishment of the system, the reform of the operating mechanism is characterized by "separation of two powers" and "three self-contracting" "Separation of two rights" means the separation of school ownership and school-running rights, which expands the autonomy of the school and reduces the focus of management, making the school independent in teacher recruitment, salary distribution, business assessment, job evaluation, equipment purchase, scientific research exchange and entrance examination. Suzhou, Jiangsu, Yangpu Development Zone, Hainan, etc. This reform was carried out. "Three systems and one package" means principal responsibility system, full employment system, structural salary system and total fund system. This reform began in Binzhou City, Shandong Province, and then spread to all parts of the country. It is one of the most mature models in the current educational management reform in China.

(5) Quality and benefit

The quality of education and teaching is the direct and external performance of running a school. Reducing the cost of running a school as much as possible and optimizing the quality of education and teaching are the concentrated and complete embodiment of the benefits of running a school. The quality of education and teaching is the eternal theme of education, and it is a huge and complex systematic project. The main factors that affect the loss of efficiency and benefit are the mode of running a school, the connection of learning segments, teaching technology and course content.

First, the mode of running a school. The main factors of interest loss are the exam-oriented education mode of compulsory education and the preparatory education mode of senior high school. The transition from exam-oriented education mode to quality education mode is the only way out in compulsory education stage; The mode of running a high school is complicated. Regardless of the regional environment, students, teachers, equipment and facilities and the needs of local social and economic development, the school always teaches reading a book, taking a set of classes, implementing a quality standard and squeezing a wooden bridge, which has created a large number of accompanying students and repeat students year after year, drowning the unique advantages of the school and obliterating students' diverse personalities and specialties. Dewey once said: the most fundamental waste is the waste of human life, the waste of children's life during school, and the waste caused by inappropriate and fallacious preparations later. Under the single mode of running a school, there is often a single type of talents, which is not a waste for the benefit principle of cultivating talents in an all-round, multi-level and eclectic way!

Second, the convergence of learning segments. If students are not prepared in study habits, teaching methods and psychological adaptation, the learning quality and efficiency will inevitably decline. If the special education of music, physical education and aesthetic education in primary schools is interrupted in junior high schools for no reason, this education in primary schools will be in vain. The education of various interests and specialties in junior high school can not be effectively continued in senior high school, and the good wishes of junior high school will be wasted. Therefore, under the principle of benefit, convergence is not only the convergence of teaching methods and psychological habits, but also the research and practice of basic education integration to prevent unnecessary waste caused by inaccurate docking.

Third, teaching technology. The improvement of modern education efficiency mainly depends on the improvement of education and teaching methods. One of the themes of contemporary education and teaching reform is still teaching methods, and the research on teaching methods is also an eternal topic. However, we should see that the modernization of teaching methods is bringing a revolution to education and teaching. We have never found that any reform of teaching methods in history can greatly improve teaching efficiency like modern multimedia technology, so that audio-visual teaching has become the first choice to change the inefficient state of teaching. Therefore, we choose the concept of education and teaching technology to replace the traditional concept of teaching methods, trying to explain that the reform of teaching methods including modern multimedia technology is an effective way to improve teaching efficiency. Computer-aided teaching in Pingjiang Experimental Primary School in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province has improved the teaching efficiency by 30-40%, so the improvement of teaching efficiency depends on the improvement of teaching means.

Fourth, the course content. As a "hub" connecting the education system and the education process, curriculum has often become the focus of previous education reforms. At present, the criticism of traditional curriculum model focuses on four aspects: 1. Traditional curriculum faces the past, but it cannot face the changing society and future. 2. The separation of subjects in the traditional curriculum system and the separation of general education and vocational education have too many disadvantages in today's world integration. 3. Traditional curriculum emphasizes cognitive growth and ignores emotional cultivation. 4. The content is fixed and lacks openness and flexibility. Throughout the history of curriculum reform, it is basically a process of alternating academic courses and vocational courses. The reform trend is to weaken the number and difficulty of academic courses, increase timely vocational courses, and make the content more modern. However, it is necessary to prevent the "pendulum phenomenon" of the curriculum that appears repeatedly in many countries in the world. First, the curriculum is too fragmented and excessive, weakening the basic academic ability. In the 1970s, American middle schools offered 2 100 courses, which were complicated and trivial. The second is to prevent the narrow tendency of industry interests in educational content and standards, and ensure the relative stability and system integrity of core courses and reasonable quality standards. Finally, it is necessary to recall a passage in the book "Learning: Inner Treasure" written by UNESCO's "International Committee on Education in the 20th Century" on April1KLOC-0/this year: "While increasing investment in education, we must pay attention to improving the efficiency and quality of education, and the increase of funds is not the only or key factor to improve the efficiency and quality of education."

note:

① Investigation on Investment Benefit of Basic Education in Underdeveloped Areas, Educational Research 1993.5.

② Seek benefits from educational resources, Guangming Daily 1996.5. 10.

③ Overall management of school-running benefits, teaching and management 196+0.

④ The interaction of education, economy and culture in the Asia-Pacific region and the role of comparative research, Comparative Education Research 1996.2.

⑤ "High investment and high benefit", "Primary and secondary school management" 196+0.

6. Can equality and quality have both? Foreign educational materials 1996.2.