How to get out of "trapping" in the county?
In the process of rapid urbanization development, the pace of development in many local counties has been difficult to keep up, and the phenomenon of "collapse in the county" has appeared. The once brilliant county has gradually become a "collapse". The implementation has brought immeasurable negative impact.
How does the county get out of the "trapped" predicament?
This is a topic that needs to be solved urgently.
Counties defeated by "County Mode"
Since the reform and opening up, under the circumstance of shortage of educational resources and difficult urban-rural population flow, all counties in various regions have generally benefited from the national development key middle school policy, which has become the main platform for students in the county to enter universities for further study and achieve intergenerational upward mobility.
Each county also strictly follows the regional enrollment policy. Students within the county are basically enrolled in local high schools, but they will enter high schools at different levels according to their high school entrance examination results.
It is against this background that the "County Mode" was born: under the strict guidance of teachers in the school, students squeeze all the available time such as weekends, holidays, winter and summer vacations to study hard and study questions, and through a lot of time investment and Closed learning to improve the college entrance examination rate.
This model, which is rooted in the soil of exam-oriented education, is widely recognized by students and parents in the county.
Batch after batch of county middle school students have changed the fate of themselves and their entire families through the college entrance examination, and also achieved the glory of the "county middle school model" in the past.
As urbanization brings more frequent population movements and changes in macro education policies, cross-regional enrollment in high schools has become more flexible.
Many city-level middle schools, especially provincial capital middle schools, rely on their superior school conditions and sufficient educational resources to quickly attract high-quality students from the whole city and even the whole province. Many private middle schools also rely on flexible enrollment methods and strong incentives. brand.
The original enrollment pattern has been reshuffled, and the county is often the weaker party, and a large number of high-quality students have been lost.
Especially the "super middle schools" that have appeared in many areas are not only huge in scale, there are dozens or even hundreds of classes in a grade, but also through layers of pinching to create a brand of "Beijing Qing rate" and "heavy education rate". A steady stream of new students are attracted.
In essence, the "super middle school" is actually an enhanced version of the "county-in-the-county model": in the admissions process, through cross-regional admissions across the province or even the whole country, and in advance, in the training process, the students' learning, eating, and education are strictly controlled. Washing, work and rest time, refined use of every minute and every second, and recruited a large number of famous teachers who are well versed in the way of taking exams, instructing students to practice high-intensity questions and repeated practice, adopting a management model close to militarization, to serve the ultimate goal of improving college entrance examination results .
"Super middle schools" have almost achieved a monopoly on the surrounding high-quality educational resources. This Matthew effect not only eclipsed the county, but also greatly damaged the educational ecology of the entire region.
In the face of the enhanced version of the aircraft carrier, the county basically has no power to fight back, and can only squeeze more students' time, write a lot of questions, monthly test, weekly test, daily test... And in the situation of the continuous outflow of high-quality students , but also to find ways to participate in the battle of students, at least to get a better bargaining chip in the competition of several high schools in the county.
Mass loss of high-quality teachers and students
In the glorious era of the county, the overall teacher level was not much different from that of urban middle schools.
In the era of college graduation distribution, many outstanding graduates of normal colleges and universities were assigned to teach in the places where their household registration was located, and the county, as the highest institution in the county, gathered many local elites.
In the era of independent career selection, outstanding normal students generally choose employment according to the order of province, city and county.
It is obvious that the gap is in the past ten years: on the one hand, it can be described as "two layers of ice and fire" in the recruitment entry link.
Key middle schools in central cities in developed regions tend to recruit highly educated talents such as PhDs from prestigious universities around the world, while teachers in underdeveloped counties are mostly from ordinary colleges and universities, and some positions are even lacking.
On the other hand, the excellent teachers, subject leaders and principals originally trained in the county suffered a serious loss.
We have conducted research in underdeveloped counties in many provinces and found similar situations. They generally go to middle schools in developed regions, perhaps with high-paying private schools.
In many local counties, the teaching staff in the middle school is in a dilemma. Some of the original key teachers have either retired or been poached, and better new teachers cannot be recruited.
Even the teachers who choose to stay in the county to develop, many are attracted by the "organization" and relatively lack teaching vitality and innovation passion.
The direct consequence of insufficient high-quality teacher resources is the loss of excellent students.
With the flow of excellent teachers to provincial and municipal high schools or "super middle schools", parents are rushing to send their children to these middle schools, which intensifies the double siphon effect on the high-quality teacher and student resources in surrounding counties.
The survey found that it is generally difficult to retain the top 100 students in the middle school entrance examination, especially the top 50 students in the underdeveloped counties.
On the one hand, most of these groups of students and their parents have taken high schools at or above the municipal level as their goals for further studies; on the other hand, local governments often acquiesce to cross-regional enrollment for their own performance considerations.
The “super middle schools” that have established a brand for further education will use various means to attract students: before the senior high school entrance examination, they will conduct selective examinations in the city or even the province to lock in the outstanding students, actively lobby the parents of outstanding students based on the test scores, and make commitments based on the family situation. Free room and board, enjoy high scholarships and other preferential policies after admission... The method is just like when "Double Eleven" is approaching, major e-commerce platforms or "head anchors" send red envelopes, reduce or exempt activities, and pay deposits through live broadcasts. and other strategies to target potential customers to the greatest extent and achieve winner-take-all.
After the double screening of active "outflow" and passive "pinch", the high-quality students in the county were basically evacuated, and those who remained were often students with average or lower grades.
This has also further “stigmatized” many counties—students also generally believe that their grades are not good or their families are incapable of choosing to study in the county. What is “collapsed” is not only the enrollment rate in the county, but also the county’s educational ecology and Educational attitudes of people.
How to get out of the "trunk" in the county
In December 2021, nine departments including the Ministry of Education issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development and Improvement of General High Schools in County Areas" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"); this year's government work report specifically emphasizes "strengthening the construction of general high schools in county areas".
In the context of the rural revitalization strategy and the construction of a high-quality education system, more targeted and effective policies and measures should be introduced in the future to help the county get out of the "sink" and reshape the county's education ecology.
Specifications from the outside, "return" guarantee.
High-quality teachers and students are the most important resources for the survival and development of the county, so it is very important to ensure the stability and even the "return" of these two resources.
High-quality teachers are also an important condition for stabilizing the source of high-quality students, and the key to ensuring the attractiveness of high-quality teachers in the county is to improve their treatment levels.
The "Plan" has proposed that it is strictly forbidden for schools in developed areas and urban areas to scramble for outstanding principals and teachers in weak areas and counties. This is a protective policy that needs to be strictly implemented by all regions.
But fundamentally, only by continuously improving the treatment of teachers in the county can we retain outstanding talents and attract more newcomers.
This is especially urgent for areas where the "outflow" of teachers is serious.
In addition, for high-quality students, it is mainly to resolutely eliminate cross-regional pinching and enrollment, and reduce the loss of high-quality students in the county from the level of policies and regulations.
The "Plan" has put forward clear requirements, and many provinces have also issued relevant regulations.
The “super middle schools” illegally recruiting top students and other educational industrialization behaviors should be strictly rectified, and the scale of school enrollment should be strictly controlled to protect the reasonable resources and legal rights of the county middle and ordinary middle schools.
Breaking from the inside, "breaking the scroll" and reborn.
Obviously, the revitalization of the county does not advocate the consolidation and improvement of the former "county model", but should explore a more diversified development method of county high schools and reshape a better county education ecology.
If the development of middle school education in the county is also measured by only the score and the only admission, even if a preferential policy is adopted to protect the source of students in the county and increase the rate of admission, the revitalization of the county is still of no importance.
To revitalize the county, it is even more necessary to update the concept of educational development, to break the chronic problems of educational evaluation, to meet the needs of the new college entrance examination reform, from "score first" to "education first", to effectively stimulate the internal drive for all students, and release their school-running vitality.
It is also necessary to coordinate the educational resources of the counties and districts from the prefecture-level city level, increase the investment in software and hardware in the counties, and support different types of counties to identify their own development positions based on the advantages of schools.
In the context of the simultaneous development of general vocational education, encourage and support some counties to develop into comprehensive high schools in which ordinary high schools and vocational high schools are integrated and infiltrated with each other, and form a school development pattern of "a hundred flowers blooming" in the county, so that more children can learn at their doorstep. Able to receive appropriate and good education.
Source: "Ban Yue Tan" Issue 10, 2022
Author: Chen Xianzhe and Kuangjuan (the author is a professor at the School of Educational Sciences, South China Normal University, and Kuangjuan is a graduate student at the School of Educational Sciences, South China Normal University) | Editor: Zheng Xuejing