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How Are Secondary Vocational Schools in China Measuring up to Government Benchmarks?
Author(s) -
Yi Hongmei,
Zhang Linxiu,
Liu Chengfang,
Chu James,
Loyalka Prashant,
Maani May,
Wei Jianguo
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
china and world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.815
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1749-124X
pISSN - 1671-2234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-124x.2013.12024.x
Subject(s) - vocational education , government (linguistics) , equity (law) , china , quality (philosophy) , proxy (statistics) , business , medical education , finance , mathematics education , psychology , political science , economic growth , pedagogy , economics , medicine , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology , machine learning , law
Drawing on a survey of 106 secondary vocational schools and 7309 students in two provinces of China, this descriptive paper assesses whether vocational schooling is measuring up to government benchmarks for quality and whether poor students are able to access quality schools. We find that secondary vocational schools have met government benchmarks for teacher qualification and training, student opportunities for practical training and adequate facilities. Furthermore, poor students access schools of similar quality to non‐poor students, even though 34 percent of poor students do not receive financial aid. We conclude that recent policies are successfully ensuring secondary vocational school quality and equity of access to school quality between poor and non‐poor students. However, financial aid policies should be re‐examined, such that poor students receive sufficient coverage. Moreover, given that input‐based measures only proxy school quality, the government should consider holding schools accountable for outcomes such as student learning.