Unequal Education, Unequal Citizen？ A Comparative Perspective on Equality in Education

Education has enormous influence on individual prospects for a flourishing life, thus, the justice of an education system is a key indicator of the justice in a society. Normally, the debate over educational justice refers to two fundamental questions： the conception of justice and the aims and purposes of education. We may agree about the meaning of justice, but disagree about the aim of education, and vice versa, and thus come to very different perspective about what educational policies should entail. However, what does justice look like when it comes to the distribution of educational goods？ Should we ensure that all children have equal educational resources and opportunities or should we rather concentrate on equal educational attachment？ Recently, there is a debate on educational justice which mainly focuses on the status and role of comparatively considerations within a just distribution of educational benefits. According to the adequacy approach, the state is required to ensure all children have enough or adequate education. Once the adequate threshold of educational resources is obtained, there is no injustice in the fact that some children have better education than others. In contrast with adequacy approach, proponents of what can be called educational equality approach have instead argued that justice requires prospects for educational achievement to be dependent upon a child＇s ability and willingness to learn, and not on factors outside of her control. Therefore, the state is required to ensure that an individual＇s prospects for educational achievement should be a function only of that individual＇s effort and talent, not of his or her social class background or other factors outside of her control. It seems that the debate between proponents of adequacy and proponents of equality in educational opportunity reflects very different ways to think about just educational policy and practice. This paper is trying to address this debate. It proceeds as follows. In the next section, I will outline the Equality vs. Adequacy debate. Then, in section III, I would like to take issue with these approaches. I will argue that both approaches have negative effects on equality and justice in education. Finally, inspired by Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen＇s work on education and equality, I will propose an alternative conception of educational equality. I believe it is a better way of understanding the meaning of educational justice for a democratic society.

Fantastic Educational Gaps and Where to Find Them:LERB-A Model to Classify Inequity and Inequality

In today’s world,education is less being considered as an outcome,but more as a journey.As the adventurers,our students are facing more and more complex challenges.Previously,the socio-economic status of a student’s family seemed to be one of the biggest factors among inequality causes.Nowadays,the chaotic situation of today's VUCA world(volatility,uncertainty,complexity,and ambiguity)is generating more and more types of inequity and inequality.Thus,the purpose of the study is to develop LERB-a simple model to classify inequity and inequality,as a stepping-stone to build a gap detection framework.Through a structured literature review,the study identified the interconnection between equity and equality,as well as their transition toward students as an individual or as a group(s)and subgroup(s).The study can also be adapted to examine the correlation between different categories of equity,as well as to brainstorm and propose remedies to tackle those gaps.

Equal Education Opportunities Call for Institutional Equality

The report to the 17th Communist Party of China （CPC） National Congress called for efforts to enable all people to have places to learn and put it in the first place of the five major issues concerning the livelihood of the people. To enable everyone to have places to learn is not only the goal of education but also the goal of promoting social equity and justice. It has endowed every member of the society with the opportunities and rights to receive education on an equal footing. It does not only enable all children to have equal opportunities to receive public education but also provide every citizen with the conditions for lifelong learning.

Assessing the Quality and Equality of Hong Kong Basic Education Results from PISA 2000+to PISA 2006

This paper seeks to examine the quality and equality of basic education of Hong Kong based on the first three cycles of the Program for International Student Assessment(PISA).Results from these three assessments suggested that the Hong Kong students have an outstanding performance in mathematics,science and reading.In particular,the performance of reading improves substantially in PISA 2006.As far as equality in education is concerned,the achievement gap of students from different socio-economic backgrounds in Hong Kong is relatively small compared with other countries.However,the academic performance variation between-schools suggest that,there is still academic segregation among secondary schools in Hong Kong although it has been reduced slightly in the PISA 2006.

Access to Higher Education of 25 Ethnic Minorities in Yunnan Province,South Western China

The level of development of higher education(HE)is an important indicator to measure the development of the social economy and the civilization of a region or country.In this article,we compare the distribution of the freshmen of ethnic minorities(EMs)with the distribution of EMs over the population,based on a sample of 1464 freshmen from 25 EMs of Yunnan Province in People's Republic of China(PRC).Although this analysis shows that access to HE is equal for some categories of EM students,it still shows that access to HE is harder for these minorities in comparison with freshmen from Han(major ethnic group comprising of 92%of the Chinese population)families.

How to Get Out of the Prisoners'Dilemma:Educational Resource Allocation and Private Tutoring

This paper analyzes the behavior of families in China regarding private tutoring,applying game theory to its discussion of their actions.It finds that families will definitely give their children private tutoring after school in order to obtain better educational opportunities in situations where the distribution of educational resources is uneven.According to game theory,overuse of private tutoring after school will waste societal resources and negatively affect all the players in the game.It is argued that a key strategy to reduce private tutoring after school is to close the gaps in state provision of education.

The detrimental effects of social capital on the balanced development of compulsory education and their governance

The balanced development of compulsory education,with a focus on the goal of educational equality,is both a matter of policy orientation and a practical educational issue.At present,people are mostly concerned with the unbalanced state of development of compulsory education,its causes,and issues regarding its administration.Various modes of production,policy choices,and institutional arrangements during different periods have been the practical,historical causes of differences in regional compulsory education,differences between urban and rural areas,and differences between schools.A direct consequence of the unbalanced development of compulsory education has been the emergence of irregularities in school selection.During the process of school selection,the strength of family and school social capital is increasingly influential,and it has increasingly negative effects:circumventing the policy of going to school near home,aggravating differences between families because of family and school social capital,and therefore damaging the prospect of educational equality.On this account,we present a constructive proposal for government policy to reduce the detrimental effects of social capital by means of reasonable policy choices and institutional arrangements.With prerequisite balanced allocation of school resources for compulsory education,the government reduces the role that family and social capital play in school selection and constructs a benignly competitive environment wherein school social capital works to placate social issues aroused by the intervention of the social capital of families and schools in school selection.

Girls Strive for Equal Education

THE difficulty girls have receiving an education equal to boys is one of the topics that will be discussed at the Fourth World Conference on Women. For years, education of females has always been a chief problem to make elementary education universal for the world’s developing countries,

Will Special-Contracted Teachers Promote the Development of Rural Students?From the Perspective of the New Human Capital Theory

The Special-Contracted Teacher Scheme,a supplement to the traditional mode of teacher supply,has been implemented for 17 years and the teaching quality of those teachers has gained a lot of attention.Using data of teachers and students from the sample counties in four central and western provincial-level administrative units,this paper studies how special-contracted teachers have affected students’academic performance and non-cognitive ability according to the student development framework of the new human capital theory,and how those effects vary among different teacher groups.Results show that while special-contracted teachers have helped improve the academic performance of rural students,their role is limited in improving students’non-cognitive ability.At the same time,female special-contracted teachers and those without a normal major play an obviously bigger role in raising students’academic performance.The conclusion is that special-contracted teachers can to some extent help narrow the urban-rural gap in academic performance,but more research needs to be done to better understand their effects on students’non-cognitive ability.