The Effectiveness of Special Governance Policies for Off-Campus Training Institutions under Limited Demand ()
1. Introduction
The 14th Five-Year Plan for the development of education aims to improve the quality of the supply system and promote the high-quality development of education. “Shadow education” is an integral part of our education. In 2016, the Chinese Society of Education released a Survey report on the Current Situation of China’s Tutoring Industry and Teachers in Tutoring Institutions, which pointed out that the scale of China’s extracurricular tutoring industry exceeded 800 billion yuan, with about 137 million students participating in extracurricular tutoring, and about 7 million to 8.5 million teachers in tutoring institutions.1 According to the OECD’s PISA 2015 data, 58% of 15-year-old students in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong have participated in after-school courses (OECD, 2016) [1] . According to the 2017 China Education Finance Household Survey (CIEFR-HS 2017) on the current situation of off-campus training of 13,110 primary and middle school students in 29 provinces across the country, the overall participation rate of off-campus education of primary and middle school students was 48.3%. The high rate and long time of students participating in off-campus training have caused a great economic burden on families and a heavy learning burden on students (Wang, 2018) [2] . The wild growth of off-campus training institutions and the burden on parents and students has become a global social problem. Existing studies have proved that prohibition, acquiescence and encouragement policies for off-campus training cannot effectively solve this problem (Xu, 2009 [3] ; Bray, 1999 [4] ; Doherty, 2018 [5] ). In order to reduce students’ extracurricular burden and family financial burden, In February 2018, the Ministry of Education and other four departments corrected the “exam-oriented” off-campus training and launched a joint special action to reduce the extracurricular burden of students and the financial burden of families. In August 2018, The General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Standardizing the Development of Off-campus Training Institutions, 2hereinafter referred to as “Opinion”. The Opinions set clear requirements for teachers, financial system, teaching content, class time, and the use of places in school training institutions. After the introduction of the national policy, the governments of 31 provinces (municipalities) and autonomous regions issued their local governance policies. According to the statistics reported by all localities, by the end of 2018, the completion rate of the national special rectification in counties (cities, districts) was 93.08%. The completion rate of off-campus training institutions was 98.93 percent.3 This paper takes the policy implementation of W district in C City as an example. We want to know whether the current special governance policy of off-campus training institutions has reduced the burden.
2. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
2.1. Literature Review
Policy process is a kind of social practice. In 1951, Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell wrote “The Science of Policy: Scope and methods of the newly developed”, he divided the field of policy science into “process of knowledge” and “knowledge” in the process of two parts, which discuss the policy process is scientific and tries to deconstruct the policy process through the scientific method, the latter focus on policy making and evaluation, and tries to provide policy makers with effective policy information (Lerner & Lasswell, 951) [6] . In this context, policy process theory, as “knowledge in process”, has become an important topic in the discipline of public administration. Lindblom (1958) pointed out in his book Policy Analysis that public policies are inevitably influenced by political factors, social costs, technology and other reasons. Policy is the result of “interaction”, not “decision” (Charles, 1979) [7] . David Easton (1953) regarded the operation system of public policy as a system of continuous circulation of input, output and feedback, and regarded the input of interest appeals as the starting point of the operation process of public policy (David, 1999) [8] . Almond proposed structural functionalism (1960), which enabled policy scholars to understand the great influence of cultural factors on public policy. James Anderson explores the relationship between policy environment and policy behavior, explaining the influence of political, economic and cultural environment on policy. In the 1970s, Wildavsky and his collaborators opened the door to policy implementation research. They believe that under uncertain conditions, policy implementation is a process of continuous policy evolution. Policy objectives are diversified, and implementation and policy influence each other. The cause of policy failure is the complexity of common behavior in policy implementation, and put forward cultural theory. The scholar Hanfu introduced the network into the policy analysis. In the past 20 years, Chinese scholars have made many attempts at localization, among which the most representative and influential theories include: “consensus decision-making model”, which holds that the policy process pursues the consent of the majority of participants (Wang & Fan, 2013) [9] , a “brainstorming Model” aimed at pooling the wisdom of all participants and optimizing the decision-making quality mechanism (Yan et al., 2013) [10] , the theory of “political potential energy” that produces different strong and weak political signals with different positions of public policy (He & Kong, 2011) [11] , the theory of “policy flexibility”, which refers to a policy behavior implemented by policy implementer after adjusting policy content and policy constraints, and the theory of “policy above and countermeasures below” (Ding et al., 2004) [12] , Hierarchical Promotion-Strategy Response” in the Construction of Upper and Lower Executive Power (Wang, 2013) [13] , “Path-incentive analysis framework” points out that policy implementation is the process of improving policy path and incentive mechanism (Yang, 2014) [14] and the policy process is to pursue a consensus democracy “consensus democracy model” (Yang, 2017) [15] . Previous studies have shown that the policy process is influenced by macro social environment, political background, social cost, technological and cultural factors, meso-level organizational behavior, major events, micro individuals, and so on. The policy process is a gradual cycle of inputs to outputs. The objectives of the policy are diverse, and the implementation of the policy and the policy influence each other. However, how to revise the framework of policy implementation after considering the participation needs of actors?
2.2. Theoretical Framework
Since the 1970s, Chinese educational scholars have formed the concept of “educational field” in the process of applying field theory to study the complex educational problems in China. Liu Shengquan defines the field of education as an objective network of relations between actors who are related to education (Liu, 2006) [16] . Cui Sining wrote in his article that policy practice is actually a process of strategic competition among policy stakeholders (Cui, 2017) [17] . Field policy arrangement is a kind of field structure that affects the behavior and practice of all participants. Different actors have different practice strategies, and the difference between theory and practice is the inducement of policy change. In the field space of educational policy, actors act with habitus, take capital as the chip of action, and take policy as the game rule of behavior; the policy result is the result of the cooperative operation of the agent’s symbolic position space and social position space under the given field. Based on the theoretical framework of predecessors, this paper combines three concepts of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to construct a cyclic and gradual YZ policy process analysis model, the model includes macro, medium, micro, behavior and structure, network and individual factors that affect the policy process; The habitus defined by Marx is the real needs of people, while the habitus defined by Bourdieu is the things that people do not want to do but have to do. The author understands that habitus is a realistic compromise of real needs and a limited need. The policy process is a process in which the limited needs of people in the field of mutual network relations are strategically realized in the policy field. Firstly, the model constructs an education policy practice field corresponding to the power field; the behavior and strategy of people in different position field of relation network are analyzed. Secondly, the difference between policy theory and practice is compared. Thirdly analyze the reasons and suggest. (Figure 1)
3. Current Situation of the Implementation of “Shadow Education” Special Governance Policy in W District of C City
Bourdieu compares a field to a game. The “shadow education” policy is like the rules of the game in the “shadow education” policy field. Players with different amounts of capital operate the field according to their habitus. Every player is
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Figure 1. YZ policy process analysis model.
trying to maintain or improve their status. The success or failure of field operation depends on the location movement of capital to produce different forms of capital change. To sum up, the policy field of “shadow education” has the following parts: First, the people. The people in the policy field of “shadow education” include policy makers, policy actors and policy recipients. Secondly, people in the field form a network of relationships. There is a symbolic relationship between people in the field, and the social relationship network between people in different spatial locations is complex. Thirdly, the behavior and practice of the subject is the game process in which the position of the subject moves between different positions in the relationship network. The practice field of “shadow education” policy is not a static physical space, but a gradual process of interaction between policy and people in the field. (Figure 2)
3.1. Research and Design
In order to understand the implementation status of the “shadow education” policy in the elementary education section of W District, C City, the author conducted a survey on the people in the “shadow education” policy field of W District, C City. The author conducted a questionnaire survey on parents, trying to find out the motivation for parents to participate in extracurricular training and how parents choose out-of-school training institutions. In order to make the survey sample can represent the “shadow education” status after the implementation of the shadow education policy in the basic education section of District W, C City. The author has collected the parents of three primary schools in C City W District for questionnaire survey, to understand their participation in out-of-school training. The three schools are distributed in several streets with different economic levels in District W, C City. Considering that the policy involves the three-thirty class policy of the school, we prefer primary schools when selecting the survey objects. Three schools are public schools.
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Figure 2. Human relationship diagram in the shadow education field.
3.2. Field Analysis of “Shadow Education” Policy Practice in W District of C City
The off-campus training institutions in District W of C City shall be subject to territorial administration, and the county-level educational administrative departments shall strengthen the supervision and administration of off-campus training institutions together with relevant departments. Results: The number of white-list institutions increased. Under the government’s supervision, the number of white-list institutions has been on the rise since 2018.
According to the interviews with school leaders, there are 74 primary schools in District W of C City, and 7 of them are randomly selected, and all of them attend the 3:30 class with a participation rate of about 60%. The data are supported by the curriculum tables of interest classes in institutions and schools. All of them are charged by the school to the parents and take the form of voluntary participation of the parents. The class at 3:30 is over at about 5 o’clock; at 3:30, the number of students in the class reaches 25, there is a phenomenon of class string. (Wvideo01)
As of August 2019, there are 80 off-campus training institutions on the white list published by the government portal of W District of C City. 80 institutions are located in 11 streets in District W of C City. Two streets, YLD and GTL, occupy 80% of the total. The author visited some institutions located in these two streets. As some problems involved the privacy of the institutions, the in-depth interview information was not comprehensive enough. Finally, eight representative off-campus training institutions were selected. From the perspective of time span, the surveyed institutions had experienced the “shadow education” policy before and after. In terms of training content, there are English institutions, cultural homework and training institutions, schools that combine drawing or dancing with homework guidance, and schools that combine practice with classroom; In terms of school mode, there are institutions that cooperate with schools and operate independently。There are commonalities among the interviewed institutions: 1) subject to government supervision; 2) Complete certificates and licenses; 3) Fierce competition; 4) Operation time: the organization can basically comply with the working day, and the operation time should not be later than 20:30 every day. There are also differences among the interviewed institutions. a) Different recruitment methods. b) Different courses, some institutions carry out curriculum reform and add special courses. c) Different fees. Institutions charge different fees according to their own course content and special services. d) The training content is different. English schools focus on English, ST art, writing as their own characteristics, but also open oral English class, NCE class, English standard class, math thinking expansion class and other personalized classes; most institutions, though, include some degree of homework help. But it also has its own special courses.
Parents are the objects served by the policy, and their behavior will affect the result of the policy implementation. Previous studies have shown that the economic capital of the family, the educational level of the parents, the expectation of education and other factors will affect the participation in shadow education (Gao & Xue, 2020 [18] ; Lei, 2005 [19] ). Through the questionnaire survey in W district of C City, the results show that mothers’ participation in shadow education is higher than that of fathers. Among 847 valid questionnaires collected, 506 parents are female, accounting for 59.74% of the respondents. Taking junior middle school group as the reference, parents’ education level positively affects the participation in tutoring, with 55 people in junior middle school and below, 462 people in senior high school, technical secondary school and vocational school, accounting for 54.55% of the survey, and 330 people with college degrees or above. The most important reason for parents to participate in shadow education is to cultivate more excellent students, nearly 800; The educational expectation of parents is 759 people, accounting for 89.61%; According to Likert data of five-level family economic income, the number of households with poor or average economic status is about 75 people, and the number of households with good or very good economic status is more than 550 people. The economic income of the family positively affects the participation of shadow education; the personalized service of the institution accounts for 57.14%, which is the main reason why parents choose it.
4. The Problems Existing in the Governance of Off-Campus Training and Its Optimization Path
The research results of W district of C City show that the special governance policy of off-campus training in W District of C City has achieved certain results. For example, the government has managed and guided the operation of the institutions, established the institutional ledger, and the number of white-listed institutions has gradually increased. The full implementation of the school class at 3:30; In-service teachers in W district of C City do not participate in after-school tutoring phenomenon, but there are still some problems to be solved. The economic burden of parents and the academic burden of students have not been reduced; the market size of off-campus training is not shrinking; School classes at 3:30 cannot meet the needs of parents. Through the research, it is found that the people in the field practice the policy according to their own habitus, and their behavior is not only constrained by the structure but also constructs the field. While the actor realizes his own limited demand, his own preference will lead to the deviation of the policy implementation. It is embodied in the interpretation of policy text and the interaction of people in policy field. We view policy deformation from these aspects.
4.1. The Scientificity and Effectiveness of the Policy Text Need to Be Strengthened
Policy text is the criterion of policy implementation. In response to the national special governance policy text issued in August 2018, 31 provinces (municipalities) and autonomous regions have issued policy texts. Local “shadow education” policies and measures are the same or slightly modified as those at the national level. As stipulated in Article 4 of the Opinions, the average area of students in off-campus training institutions during the same training period should not be less than 3 m2; Item 4 of “Standards for Setting Up Off-campus Training Institutions in C City” Off-campus training institutions shall have an average area of no less than 3 m2 and a building area of no less than 300 m2 in the same training period. The author visited the training institutions in C City, and found that the institutions held various forms of composition classes, curriculum training classes, curriculum enhancement classes, etc., which could not meet the requirements of the per student area. The concept of “superclass” and “advance” mentioned in the policy text of the Opinions is vague. In actual actions, actors are defined according to their own disposition, which is difficult to supervise. For example, institutions have their own textbooks, and private school English has two sets of textbooks.
4.2. There Is No Long-Term Governance Mechanism between Government and Enterprise
The government’s regulatory failure is reflected in the unclear “power and responsibility” of the government, the lack of professional literacy of policy implementation personnel, the diversity, complexity and concealment of policy objectives, etc. 1) The “rights and responsibilities” of the executive subject are unclear. In the process of the special management policy of the off-campus training, the implementation subject is the education administration department, the industrial and commercial bureau, the civil affairs bureau, the fire department, the street office and other departments. The relationship between these departments is horizontal or indirect vertical relationship, and it is difficult to define the rights and responsibilities between departments. 2) The quality of policy implementation personnel is not enough. The implementation personnel are the staff of education Bureau, industry and commerce, urban management and other departments. “Shadow education” has strong professionalism. The current policy implementors in District W are not “shadow education” experts, and the policy is still in the stage of crossing the river by feeling the stones. Lack of professional adaptation suggestions, governance is in a passive state. 3) The policy of “shadow education” has multiple objectives and multiple stakeholders, and it is different from the mainstream education in its characteristics of privacy, compensation, complexity and so on. For example, the information is asymmetry between government and enterprises. In addition, the school training institutions in District W of C City have not yet established the financial system, and there are many charging channels at present. How should the education department leaders in the compulsory education section supervise and improve the financial and asset management system of the institutions?
4.3. Mismatch between Supply and Demand
The relation between supplier and demander is a market exchange relation of service. The supplier exchanges its cultural capital with the economic capital of the demander. The relationship between supply and demand is discussed from two aspects. On the one hand, between the school and parents, the 3:30 class cannot meet the needs of parents; On the one hand, it is reflected in the relationship between parents and institutions. Institutions cannot adapt to the needs of parents.
Mainstream schools cannot meet the real needs of parents reflected in the number of school district housing; On the other hand, it is reflected in the teaching quality of the school. The basic education section of schools in the district has different qualifications and uneven distribution. Parents’ cognition of “nearby admission” policy is manifested in the attribution of high quality degree, and hidden in the ladder housing price. The family’s real estate and symbolic capital (such as social status, military personnel and related honorary titles) are effective conditions for children to “enroll nearby”. Households in the capital location receive mismatched demand. They look elsewhere, enrolling in private schools or supplementing their studies with out-of-school training. There is a tug of war between service-oriented private schools, out-of-school training institutions and mainstream schools with balanced supply. Fairness, efficiency, what is the habitus tendency of parents? No matter what kind of school they attend, families will still pursue individualized elite services within their means.
Through in-depth interviews with parents, it is found that the participation in the 3:30 class is constrained by the symbolic capital of the school. 1) The authority of identity, some parents (2020P1101) think that the classes they attend are taught by their own teachers for pay, and they are afraid that if they do not attend, their children will be left out in the cold in class. 2) The authority of the language, the teacher should be induced in the class, and should participate in the class at 3:30 without special reasons. The teacher told the class that he could not only do the homework at 3:30 after class, but also occasionally hand out some learning content related to the final exam.
Households and institutions have the problem of information mismatch between supply and demand. The main performance is that the learning content provided by the organization does not match, and the qualification information does not match two aspects. 1) The teaching content does not match. The mismatch between supply and demand content is reflected in the gap between what parents want to learn and what institutions teach. For example, the knowledge provided by teachers in institutions is based on what students have learned in school, and at the same time, the phenomenon of teaching materials compiled by institutions themselves exists. Since different teachers have different levels, most teachers have their own teaching plans before class and explain according to them. There are differences in learning progress and teaching materials used in schools in different districts. The degree of learning mastery of students is not consistent. When there is a non-one-to-one teaching, the topic that parents want the teacher to explain will not be explained, and the students will have new doubts according to the teacher’s teaching plan. Increase the psychological burden of students. 2) Asymmetric qualification information. There is a problem with asymmetric information between the services agencies sell to parents. The demander cannot distinguish the authenticity of the institutional information. For example, in a survey conducted in District W of C City, it was found that the teaching certificates of related personnel on the bulletin board did not match. Not all certified people work in institutions. And some of the teachers in the institution are not certified to attend classes as usual.
4.4. Random Strain of Institution
The target of the policy is the training institution outside the school, and the institution adapts to the identity, teachers and teaching content, so that the policy implementation is different. In the form of running an institution, the institution avoids risk through flexible treatment. Some training institutions to art training plus custody, interest class painting plus homework custody, homework custody plus one-to-one, one-to-many tutoring and other forms of institutions still exist.
Personnel management: “opinions” pointed out that external training institutions must have a stable teaching staff, full-time teachers have more than three, and not less than 50% of the total number of full-time teachers. In the institutions investigated by the author, it is found that less than 50% of the teachers with certificates, in the institutions and the certified teachers posted on the external walls of the institutions do not match the existing teachers in the institutions. The W District Education Bureau requires the organization to increase the number of security personnel in security. Such as 50 to 200 students, a full-time security personnel, etc. According to the minutes of the Education Bureau’s meeting that day, only one agency in the district had security personnel. The teaching content of institutions: The Opinions stipulate that the training content shall not exceed the main class and the training progress shall not be advanced. However, the definition of “super” word standards are not unified, institutions currently have Olympic math classes, training courses, such as excellence, difficult to supervise. About business hours, the Agency director said: “It depends on the specific situation. Most of the students in our institution are senior students, and after attending the school’s 3:30 class, sometimes can’t finish the homework before 20:30.”
4.5. Parents and Students Have Not Realized the Burden Reduction
The goal of the “Opinions” is to reduce the academic burden of students and the economic burden of parents. The motivation for parents to invest in education is the pursuit of human capital increment, and the investment basis is economic capital. According to the recycling data, the economic burden of families and the academic burden of students have not been alleviated due to the competition between parents. 1) The scale of participation in “shadow education”. All parents were paid to attend various types of after-school courses. 2) The participation and economic investment in “shadow education” are large. Depending on the type of input, parents are paid to participate in after-school activities at 3:30, after-school facilities, or both. 3) Students participate in “shadow education” for a long time. The duration of participation varies from weeks to hours. The burden on parents and students has not changed much because of the policy. Parents choose the services of an institution based on its own capital stock and its maximum expectation of cultural capital increment. The personalized service content of parents’ investment institutions, such as training and making up the difference, and value-added services such as meals and transportation, cannot resist the majesty of teachers. In the public schools in W District that the author visited, about 60% of the school’s “3:30 class” was attended by parents. At the same time, parents interviewed were not satisfied with the service time, service content and service mode of the “3:30 class” in varying degrees. Some parents’ participation in the 3:30 class is due to a trade-off between price and teacher authority.
The most fundamental reason for the “shadow education” craze is that the scarcity of high-quality education resources cannot meet the needs of parents. After the improvement of the national living standard, the demand for education has gradually changed from receiving education to receiving good education. Unable to find satisfaction in mainstream education offices, parents turn to institutional support. Catering to the needs of parents, the institution provides differentiated and precise education such as teaching scale, teacher-student ratio and tailored learning plan compared with mainstream schools, which is favored by parents. Parents use capital to redistribute educational resources and pursue the increment of their own cultural capital. Despite the popularization of compulsory education, students apply for admission according to the principle of “nearby admission”, which makes students realize fair access to education. However, high school education has not been popularized, leading to the diversion of students. Furthermore, quality university resources are still scarce. Moreover, the differences in educational resources between urban and rural areas and urban areas, as well as the preference of parents’ educational investment in different regions, will deepen the differences and unevenness of such resources. The current market demand for talents is different in different schools and majors. Generally speaking, the market prefers 985, 211 and double first-class in schools. Professional advantage is also a guarantee of employment opportunities, salary and development prospects. From the perspective of educational development, the master’s and doctor’s enrollment catalogs of colleges and universities make it clear that the source of students and scholarship mechanisms are tilted toward elite universities.
5. Conclusion
Through field research in District W of C City, the author found that the current opinions policy has achieved results in the process of policy implementation, but there are still many problems to be solved. These problems are attributed to the “shadow education” field of people to meet their limited needs of behavior and practice. In the future, the special governance of “shadow education” needs to gradually improve the relevant legal system, improve the satisfaction of school education, and strengthen the parents’ rational education investment concept and other measures. At the same time, can we learn from the governance experience of other countries? For example, off-campus training in Japan is managed by special industrial departments (Nakazawa et al., 2015) [20] ; Singapore has established a sound information disclosure system to optimize the market environment for institutional operations; In South Korea, the government pays for after-school study (Zhou & Zhou, 2017) [21] ; To increase the annual frequency of talent selection, the U.S. government has the biggest impact on high school students to apply for college, the “Scholastic ability Assessment test” (SAT) and the “American College Assessment Test” (ACT), both called the “American college entrance examination”. The SAT is given seven times a year (Ren, 2008) [22] . Education is an important and urgent matter for the national economy and people’s livelihood. “Shadow education” is an important component of education, and its orderly development depends on the further guidance of policies. How to adjust the limited needs of people in the field is the direction of future research.
NOTES
1http://www.gov.cn/shuju/2016-12/27/content_5153561.htm
2http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2018-08/22/content_5315690.htm
3http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201901/t20190117_367212.html