-"the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's Decision on Several Major Issues of Comprehensively Deepening Reform"
A few days ago, "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's Decision on Several Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform" was officially released, which opened a new chapter in comprehensively deepening reform. Under the overall goal of "improving and developing the Socialism with Chinese characteristics system, promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity" and the specific deployment of accelerating the transformation of government functions, the "Decision" puts forward "further promoting the separation of management and office" in the deployment of deepening the comprehensive reform in the education field. What is the profound connotation and significance behind it? Why is the reform of education management system repeatedly prohibited? Where is the difficulty? How to establish a new relationship among government, school and society? Around these issues, the reporter recently interviewed Qu Zhenyuan, president of China Higher Education Society, Ceng Tianshan, vice president of China Academy of Educational Sciences, Yang Yinfu, deputy director of National Education Development Research Center, and Li Xigui, president of the 11th Affiliated High School of Beijing Normal University.
What does the transition from "management" to "governance" mean?
In the past, we also recognized the problem of insufficient management ability. Today, we should recognize the problem of insufficient management ability and lack of modernization, that is, not only the top-down management ability, but also the pluralistic, equal and coordinated governance ability.
Q: "Perfecting and developing the Socialism with Chinese characteristics system, and promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity" is the overall goal of comprehensively deepening the reform. How to understand the deepening of comprehensive reform in the field of education under this general goal? How to understand the profound connotation of the word "governance"?
Qu Zhenyuan: The current reform of the education management system should be understood in the overall goal of comprehensively deepening the reform put forward by the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. The "Decision" proposes that the overall goal of comprehensively deepening the reform is to "improve and develop the Socialism with Chinese characteristics system and promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity". This general goal is not only the theory of state governance, but also the goal of our reform. We have been talking about "management" for a long time. This time, the "Decision" highlights the word "governance" and also emphasizes that the governance system and governance capacity should be modernized. I think this is a very advanced concept, which can be said to be the biggest highlight of the Decision.
We should deeply understand the profound connotation of the transition from management to governance. Management is top-down, one-dimensional and one-way. Governance refers to the process of coordination and interaction among multiple stakeholders around the common goal under the condition that the market plays a decisive role in resource allocation under the socialist market economy system. It can be said that with the diversification of actors and stakeholders in the market economy, the relationship between the government and the people, society, enterprises and schools should also be equal, two-way, interactive and cooperative.
Under the background of changing from management to governance and promoting the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity, it is an urgent and realistic task to realize the modernization of educational governance system and governance capacity. Not only from the perspective of higher education, but also from the perspective of basic education, vocational and technical education and lifelong education system construction.
Yang Yinfu: Under the overall goal of deepening reform in an all-round way, comprehensive reform in the field of education should also strive to lead the innovation of education development model with the innovation of education management model and education governance model. The core requirement of innovative education management mode is to change from micro-management to macro-management, from direct management to indirect management, from running education to managing education, and from management to service. However, educational governance goes beyond the vision of administrative management, and its core is to correctly handle the relationship between government, schools and society and establish a complete governance structure.
Q: Can we analyze the necessity and practical significance of the transformation from "management" to "governance" in the light of the actual situation of education in China?
Qu Zhenyuan: From the perspective of higher education, both the development of higher education itself and the change of the external environment of higher education have realistic needs and possibilities for the modernization of educational governance system and governance capacity.
Within higher education, at present, China's higher education has entered the stage of popularization and is at a medium level. 1998, there were 1022 colleges and universities in China with more than 5.9 million students. At present, there are 2,442 colleges and universities in China with more than 30 million students. In the past, the average size of the school was about 5,000 students, but now it is more than 1 1,000 students. These can be understood not only as the expansion of the scale of higher education, but also as the complexity of higher education organization, the diversification of structure, the differentiation of levels, the diversification of rights and interests and the increasing demand for democracy.
In addition to the complex changes in higher education itself, the external environment of higher education has also undergone tremendous changes. First of all, after the expansion of the scale of higher education, the stakeholders of higher education have greatly increased. In the past, there were few students in colleges and universities, and many people didn't understand higher education, which was very mysterious. Nowadays, going to college is a very common thing, and the number of stakeholders has increased significantly. More people can feel higher education and see problems more easily, which is one reason why the whole society can comment on higher education. Secondly, the market economy system also requires the education system to adapt to it. At present, many colleges and universities have diversified sources of funds, and the number of fund-raising is increasing. Some schools receive less than 1/5 from the state. The channel for the educated to go to society, that is, the employment channel, has also changed further, and the market plays a decisive role in employment. The breadth and depth of international exchange and cooperation in education are unprecedented, and so on. All these indicate that the external environment of higher education has changed greatly.
The development of higher education itself and the change of the external environment of higher education tell us that the development of education is obviously incompatible with the past "management" concept.
The reality requires that the management of higher education be managed by higher education.