Abstract
China’s uneven regional economic development and decentralisation of its education system have led to increasing regional education disparities. Here, we introduce a new multidimensional index, the Index of Regional Education Advantage (IREA), underpinned by Amartya Sen’s capability approach, to evaluate the effectiveness of policies targeted at reducing regional/provincial educational inequalities in China since 2005. The analysis of the distribution of IREA scores and the decomposition of the index reveals that education in north-eastern China is better than in the south-west part of the country, a pattern which lacks conformity with the eastern, middle and western macro-divisions adopted by Central Government as the basis of policy implementation. In addition, the education of migrant children and the low transfer rate into high schools are identified as key issues requiring Government attention.
Highlights
Education equality has been valued in numerous international legal instruments and by leading worldwide development agencies (OECD 2012; UNESCO 2015)
Debates about policy were generated that reflect concern with unequal development (Wei 1999; Yang 2002; Kanbur and Zhang 2005; Fan and Sun 2008; Li and Wei 2010), most of the literature considers only regional economic inequality in China, and relatively little attention has been paid to regional education inequality
Both the pattern of Index of Regional Education Advantage (IREA) and its decomposed facets at provincial scale do not match with the regional division adopted by Central Government
Summary
Education equality has been valued in numerous international legal instruments and by leading worldwide development agencies (OECD 2012; UNESCO 2015). The capability approach of Sen, offers the theoretical justification for a comprehensive and multi-dimensional method to evaluate real regional education advantages or disadvantages This assessment framework fills the current theoretical void and provides a basis for inequality measurements using the new synthetic index. The enrolment score shows a clear north-east versus south-west pattern At this stage, there is more financial investment from Central Government devoted to support education in the western areas. In 2014, in the northern areas where there were more support from Central Government and a solid education foundation, and in the eastern coastal areas with their higher economic development levels, the capability of education (IREA) was higher, indicating that these areas will have more chance of being advantaged, while the south-west provinces, especially Tibet and Guizhou, will remain disadvantaged in education in future. It is likely that education inequalities between the south-western and north-eastern areas will continue in the near future, if the relevant policies remain unchanged
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