For China's rural areas, farmers' lack of cultural knowledge, low scientific and technological quality, backward concepts and habits, and weak market participation have become the biggest bottlenecks in the development of agriculture and rural economy. Rural education is the basic project to improve the quality of rural labor force and promote the development of agriculture and rural economy. However, there are various problems in the current rural education system, which hinder the improvement of the quality of rural labor force.
(A) rural education and rural development need to be separated.
At present, the most fundamental problem of rural education in China is that it is divorced from rural reality. The current rural education in China regards the entrance examination as the whole purpose of education and the main goal of talent training. Using the urban education system and school-running mode, and using rural teaching materials, teaching contents and teaching methods to run rural education is not aimed at all students, but at a few top students. Therefore, rural education rarely reflects the characteristics of rural areas and it is difficult to meet the special requirements of rural areas. Rural middle school graduates under this educational model generally lack agricultural scientific and technological knowledge and labor skills, which can not meet the actual needs of rural economic development. Fundamentally speaking, the current rural education is to train talents for the city and leave the countryside and agriculture, rather than "for the countryside". Such rural education has been difficult to meet the needs of the adjustment of rural industrial structure for middle and senior professionals, and can not really play a role in promoting the development of agriculture and rural economy. It has seriously lagged behind the needs of agricultural and rural economic development and is in urgent need of reform.
(B) the rural education funds are seriously inadequate and lack of reliable sources.
The state's investment in public education is seriously insufficient. According to statistics, at present, China's education investment accounts for about 3% of the gross national product, which is lower than the world average of 5%. According to the statistics of UNESCO World Education Report 1998, the students trained in China account for 18.45% of the world education funds. Investment in basic education is even less. In China, the proportion of junior high school students, middle school students and senior high school students is about 80: 16: 1, while the proportion of investment in education is the opposite, about 1:3:52. According to estimates, the number of primary and secondary school students in China accounts for 1/4 of the world's total, while its education funds only account for1145 of the world's corresponding funds. In such a small amount of total funds for basic education, the proportion of financial funds (about 75%) is seriously lower than the international usual proportion (more than 85%). At present, China's rural education is mainly basic education, which is twice as large as urban basic education, but the total amount of education funds obtained is less than half of urban education. It can be seen that the investment in rural education in China is seriously insufficient.
After the reform of rural taxes and fees, the educational burden of farmers has indeed been reduced, but new problems have emerged in rural education investment. According to the current system, on the one hand, the financial resources of the financial system are concentrated upwards, and the less financial resources are available at the grassroots level; On the other hand, in the education system, "running schools at different levels and managing them at different levels" devolves the main responsibility of ensuring the funds for running schools in rural areas to the township level. However, many towns and villages are affected by unfavorable factors such as unreasonable economic structure, reduced financial resources, persistently low prices of agricultural products and poor management of township enterprises. The fiscal revenue growth is weak and the stamina is insufficient. Township governments have become "food finance", and some even become "begging finance", not to mention supporting education. In addition, after the education fee, which accounted for a large proportion of the original investment in rural education, was added and the fund-raising for rural education was cancelled, the reformed agricultural tax did not stipulate the corresponding proportion for rural education and how to ensure the investment in rural education by governments at all levels, which also made the investment in rural education lose its guarantee.
The education cost of farmers' children is getting higher and higher.
Before the reform of rural taxes and fees, the funds for rural basic education were raised by the budget allocation of "township (town) overall planning and village retention fees", supplemented by education fees and education fund-raising. Therefore, compulsory education in China is actually not an obligation, and the tuition and miscellaneous fees of rural schools are very high, which means that farmers actually undertake the obligation of compulsory education in rural areas. According to a basic survey in a central province, farmers need 1 0,000 yuan to support a primary school student, junior high school students need 1, and senior high school students need 1 for three years in 400 yuan. These expenses are all cash consumption, and they are mandatory, centralized and one-off. With the slow growth of farmers' income and the increase of farmers' families' paying for their children's schooling, the situation that some families can't afford the education expenses leads to their children dropping out of school is becoming more and more serious.
Second, the strategic concept of rural education system reform
(1) Strengthen the leading position of the government and increase investment in rural education.
1, strengthen the main position of government investment in running schools. There is nothing wrong with all the ideas of private education, but it cannot dilute the main position of the government in the investment of rural education funds. Especially in the current social and economic situation, we should not blindly exaggerate the role of social education. From the perspective of the long-term stability and prosperity of the whole country and nation, investment in rural education is and must be the obligation of the government, and finance at all levels should further increase the proportion of education expenditure.
2. Effectively guarantee the investment in rural basic education. It is necessary to ensure that rural basic education truly becomes compulsory education, and resolutely plug the loopholes in rural primary and secondary schools that transfer the burden to students due to insufficient funds. According to the spirit of the education law, the state should gradually dredge, improve and standardize the investment mode of rural education funds, especially to fully guarantee the investment in the nine-year compulsory education stage.
3. The employment training and knowledge renewal education of rural labor force should also take the government as the main body. On the premise of ensuring the investment in rural basic education, the government invests in the establishment of rural labor employment training funds and bases, and provides free classified training according to the age, culture, residence development and overall needs of economic development of the existing rural labor force.