Zhong Binglin： Building a Powerful Education Country and Developing a New Pattern of Service ｜ Deep Interpretation of the Fifth Plenary Session ②
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Proposal on Formulating the 14th Five-year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035 comprehensively affirmed the major achievements of China’s economic and social development during the 13th Five-year Plan period, defined the long-term goals of China’s economic and social development during the 14th Five-year Plan period and in 2035, and provided basic guidance for China’s long-term planning in the field of education.
Let’s take a look at Zhong Binglin, a member of the National Education Advisory Committee and a professor at Beijing Normal University, who interprets the article "Building an Education Power and Developing a New Pattern of Service".
Building a strong education country and serving a new pattern of development
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee in communist party, China, recently deliberated and adopted the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Proposal on Formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-term Goals for 2035, which comprehensively affirmed the major achievements of China’s economic and social development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, defined the long-term goals of China’s economic and social development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period and in 2035, and provided basic guidance for China to formulate medium-and long-term plans in the field of education.
Improving the popularization of education is an important development achievement in the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan"
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee spoke highly of the decisive achievements in building a well-off society in an all-round way. During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, China made a major breakthrough in comprehensively deepening reform, made significant progress in comprehensively administering the country according to law, made significant achievements in comprehensively administering the party strictly, accelerated the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, and further demonstrated the advantages of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s leadership and China’s socialist system.
The popularization of education in China has been improved in an all-round way, and the problem of "difficulty in going to school" has been fundamentally alleviated. According to the Statistical Bulletin on the Development of National Education in 2019 issued by the Ministry of Education, there are 530,100 schools at all levels, with 282 million students and 17.32 million full-time teachers. The popularization of pre-school education in three years has been accelerated, and the gross enrollment rate has reached 83.4%; Nine-year free compulsory education was fully implemented, with a consolidation rate of 94.8%; High school education is basically universal, with a gross enrollment rate of 89.5%; Higher education has entered the stage of popularization, with a total enrollment of 40.02 million students and a gross enrollment rate of 51.6%. China’s educational development level has entered the ranks of the upper middle class in the world.
In particular, it should be pointed out that the transition from the popularization stage of higher education to the popularization stage is one of the important development achievements of China’s economic and social development during the 13 th Five-Year Plan period. In 1998, China put forward the goal of popularization of higher education. In 2002, the gross enrollment rate of higher education reached 15%, and it took only four years to enter the stage of popularization of higher education. From 2002 to 2019, it took only 17 years to move from the popularization stage of higher education to the popularization stage. From 2015 to 2019, the gross enrollment rate of higher education increased by 11.6 percentage points. According to the data released by the World Bank, the scale expansion of higher education in high-income countries and middle-income countries is a relatively stable upward trend, while the scale of higher education in China has maintained rapid growth in the past 20 years, which is much higher than the average growth rate of middle-income countries and the world average. It has achieved leap-forward development in scale and achieved remarkable achievements.
During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s economic and social development achievements have provided a guarantee for the priority development of education, and educational development achievements are also an important symbol of economic and social development, so it is of great milestone significance to enter the stage of popularization of higher education.
Building an education power is the long-term goal in 2035.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee deeply analyzed the profound and complicated changes facing China’s development environment, and held that China’s development is still in an important period of strategic opportunities at present and in the future, which is a new judgment on China’s "14th Five-Year Plan" period and long-term development situation. Judging from the international situation, today’s world is experiencing a great change that has never happened in a hundred years. Competition and integration coexist, and instability and uncertainty have increased significantly. Judging from the domestic situation, the problem of unbalanced and insufficient development in China is still outstanding, and the innovation ability has not yet adapted to the requirements of high-quality development.
In this context, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee clearly put forward the long-term goal of basically realizing socialist modernization in 2035, including building an educational power, reaching a new height in national quality and social civilization, and making more obvious substantive progress in the all-round development of people and the common prosperity of all people. The plenary session put forward the main goals of economic and social development during the 14 th Five-Year Plan period, including reaching a new level of people’s livelihood and well-being, and constantly improving the education level of the whole people. Whether it is the long-term goal or the development goal during the 14 th Five-Year Plan period, it embodies the people-centered development concept, promotes the well-being of people’s livelihood to a new level, and constantly realizes people’s yearning for a better life.
This requires us to adhere to the people-centered development concept, build a high-quality education system, and ensure that the people enjoy a fairer and better education. It is necessary to fully implement the Party’s educational policy, adhere to moral education, strengthen the construction of teachers’ morality and style, and cultivate socialist builders and successors with all-round development in morality, intelligence, physique, beauty and labor. It is necessary to improve the quality of education at all levels, promote the balanced development of compulsory education and the integration of urban and rural areas, develop preschool education, encourage the diversified development of high school, run special education well, improve the quality and level of education in ethnic areas, enhance the adaptability of vocational and technical education, promote the classified development of higher education in the popularization stage, support and standardize private education, and so on, so as to meet the diversified educational demands of the people. It is necessary to improve the cooperative education mechanism of school, family and society, improve the quality of teachers’ ability to teach and educate people, enhance students’ civilized quality, social responsibility awareness and practical skills, and attach importance to the physical quality and mental health education of teenagers. We should adhere to the principle of public welfare in education, focus on promoting educational equity, rationally allocate educational resources, narrow the regional, urban and rural and inter-school differences of all kinds of education at all levels, and ensure the people’s rights, opportunities and procedural fairness in receiving education. Let the people share the fruits of economic and social development and work hard to build an education power and enter the forefront of an innovative country.
The new pattern of service development is the new mission of education reform and development.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee proposed to speed up the construction of a new development pattern with the domestic big cycle as the main body and the domestic and international double cycles promoting each other. This is an important judgment made by the party and the country in view of the changes in the situation at home and abroad, and it is also a strategic choice to create new advantages in China’s international cooperation and competition. The new pattern of service development requires not only giving full play to the advantages of human resources in education and improving the ability of independent innovation, but also opening up to the outside world at a high level and opening up a new situation of international exchange and cooperation in education.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee put forward that innovation should be the core of China’s overall modernization, self-reliance and self-reliance in science and technology should be the strategic support for national development, and the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education, strengthening the country through talents, and innovation-driven development should be thoroughly implemented, so as to improve the national innovation system and accelerate the construction of a strong country through science and technology. On September 22, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out at the symposium of experts in the field of education, culture, health and sports: "Human resources are an important support for building a new development pattern." "China’s colleges and universities should bravely shoulder heavy burdens, release the potential of basic research and scientific and technological innovation in colleges and universities, focus on the needs of national strategy, aim at key core technologies, especially the problem of’ stuck neck’, and speed up technological research." This puts forward urgent requirements for deepening education reform, strengthening the cultivation of innovative talents, improving the scientific research and innovation ability of colleges and universities and improving the quality of education. At present, it is especially necessary to deepen the reform of educational evaluation, implement the fundamental task of cultivating people by virtue, strengthen the leading role of innovation in basic disciplines, strengthen the cross-integration of disciplines, and provide fundamental direction guidance and basic support for the innovation of technology, organization and mode.
The new development pattern is not a closed domestic cycle, but an open domestic and international dual cycle. The plenary session proposed to implement a high-level opening up, open up a new situation of win-win cooperation, and form a new pattern of opening up. This requires us to give full play to the advantages of information technology in the post-epidemic period, explore new forms of international exchange and cooperation in education, expand new fields of international exchange and cooperation in education, improve the quality of education for international students in China, attach importance to the local internationalization of university governance system and education and teaching, base ourselves on local universities, enhance the internationalization and cross-cultural literacy of all students, and promote the new pattern of internationalization of education.
Deepening comprehensive reform is a key task in the current education field.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee put forward that taking reform and innovation as the fundamental driving force and meeting the people’s growing needs for a better life as the fundamental purpose, comprehensively deepening reform is still the guiding ideology and principle that must be followed in the economic and social development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
General Secretary of the Supreme Leader presided over the 16th meeting of the Central Committee for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, stressing that since the 13th Five-Year Plan, a major breakthrough has been made in comprehensively deepening reform, and China will enter a new stage of development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and the reform has reached a new juncture. The meeting listened to the report on the progress of comprehensive education reform since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, and emphasized that since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, we have strengthened the Party’s overall leadership over education, deployed and promoted comprehensive education reform, the main framework of Socialism with Chinese characteristics’s education system has been basically established, some institutional and institutional obstacles that have long restricted the development of education have been solved, a large number of experiences and practices of grassroots reform and innovation have emerged, and the educational landscape is undergoing pattern changes. During the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period, we should continue to deepen the comprehensive reform in the field of education, fully implement the party’s educational policy, closely implement the fundamental task of educating people in virtue and morality, and strive to build an educational system that comprehensively cultivates morality, intelligence, physique, beauty and labor. It is necessary to optimize the educational structure, discipline and specialty structure and personnel training structure that are compatible with the new development pattern, and make overall plans to promote the reform of educational methods, school-running models, management systems and guarantee mechanisms. It is necessary to focus on the strategic needs of serving the country, focus on the urgent needs and expectations of the people, focus on building a high-quality and balanced basic public education service system, and accelerate the narrowing of regional and urban-rural gaps.
How to deal with the internal relationship between reform and development, deeply understand the new features and requirements brought about by the major contradictions and changes in our society, the new contradictions and challenges brought about by the complicated international environment, and the new features and tasks of deepening the comprehensive reform in the education field, closely implement the new development concept, promote high-quality development, build a new development pattern, focus on solving outstanding problems, and improve the strategic, forward-looking and targeted education reform. At present, it is the main task in China’s education field to make the reform better meet the needs of economic and social development and the people’s demands for quality education, and to promote the deep integration and efficient linkage between education reform and development.
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