Taking basic education in the PRC forward : a study of the enjoyment of the right to education in the PRC in international and domestic law

Abstract

In the past 30 years, the inspiring progress of the basic education in China has attracted global attention, not merely for China’s determination of developing national education, but for the workable strategies adopted by the Chinese government to implement the right to education as well. The right to education, a fundamental human right recognized in both global and domestic legal system, is elaborated by United Nations human rights bodies on four key dimensions of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. The achievement of expanding education to all children for minimum of nine years in China, to a certain extent, is a quantitative triumph of universal access to basic education. However, beyond the statistical victory of enrollment in schools, the increasing disparity of access to good quality education among different social groups, especially between urban and rural children, remains the biggest challenge for China to fully meet the four dimensions of the right to education. The thesis attempts to explore the factors related to policy-making, institutional governance and legal protection, which may result in the gaps in qualitative development of the basic education in China. The study focuses on the development of basic education in China and scrutinizes the two aspects of implementation of the right to education: policy-making and protection of individual right. In the line with a human rights-based approach promoted by United Nations and UNESCO, the thesis evaluates how the Chinese government performs the obligations to promote, protect and fulfill the right to education in terms of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. The thesis observes that the fulfillment of right to education in China, despite the remarkable quantitative increase in school enrollment and educational facilities, has not fully complied with the obligations required by the relevant human rights treaties. To meet with universal standards on basic education further, the study concludes that strategies for implementing the right to education in China must shift to qualitative development by applying a rights-based approach to education and an effective framework for the provision and enforcement of legal remedies for the substandard education. These analyses are crucial to inspect the development of Chinese basic education, which both presents China’s successful strategies of promoting national action plans of education, and reveals gaps remained in the enforcement of the right to education in China. The purpose of the research is not only to address the current problems existing in the field of basic education, but also to explore the adoptable measures to further improve the enjoyment of the right to education in China.