The Chinese government marked today's 23rd Teachers' Day with yet more grand pronouncements on spending and solemn commitments to improving education across China.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, during a visit to Beijing's Teachers' University on 9 September stressed that: "Although our country has made great economic and social progress in recent years, the development has not been even. We must improve education development in rural areas a lot so that every child can go to school."
At the same time, the official Xinhua News Agency announced that government expenditure on education would increase by nearly 20 percent this year to 646.1 billion yuan (US$85 billion) with the bulk of that spending going to rural education, subsidies for impoverished students, high-schools and colleges, and vocational education.
Despite the impressive sounding figures, government expenditure as a proportion of China's gross domestic product (GDP) remains very low by international standards, consistently below 3 percent over the last five years. In 2006, the government spent US$71 billion on education, just 2.65 percent of GDP, which stood at US$2.68 trillion. And even if the government does spend its committed US$85 billion in 2007, that will still only represent about 2.93 percent of GDP if the economy grows at 8 percent this year.
In her 2003 report on education in China, United Nations Special Rapporteur, Katarina Tomaševski recommended that China's "budgetary allocation for education be increased to the internationally recommended minimum of 6 per cent of GDP, that is, doubled from 3 to 6 per cent."
The government's under-funding of education over the last decade has created serious and widespread problems, especially in rural areas where the bulk of the funding for schools' day-to-day operations often comes from fees charged to parents. Teachers' salaries and pensions are not being paid, and schools are running up massive debts just to cover the cost of equipment purchases and building maintenance.
The high cost and poor quality of the rural school system has led to increasing numbers of children dropping out of school early and going into work while still under the legal minimum employment age of 16. It has also led to many rural schools selling their students' labour to factories in so called "work study" and "summer employment" programmes. See Small Hands, CLB's newly published report on child labour, and Students exploited by both schools and employers in summer work programmes.
If the government is to tackle the growing problem of child labour in China, it not only has to increase spending on education but also ensure that the budgetary allocations it makes do go to the appropriate areas; so that schooling in rural areas truly is free and universal, teachers' salaries are paid in full and on time, and that the schools can pay off their debts and improve the facilities they can offer their students. In this way, the incentives for students to drop-out before completing their nine years of compulsory education, and for shchools to exploit their students, will be greatly reduced.