In recent years, the call for extending the years of compulsory education is getting louder and louder. However, the Ministry of Education has repeatedly stated that it is impossible to upgrade the nine-year compulsory education to a twelve-year system at this stage. Indeed, whether it is extended to preschool education or high school, there must be the guarantee of education investment and education reform. China does not have the social foundation and social consensus to implement 12-year compulsory education, so it is not appropriate to extend the period of compulsory education too quickly.
Based on the development reality of nine-year compulsory education in China, it is more practical to lay a solid foundation than to implement twelve-year compulsory education. Although the nine-year compulsory education has made a historic leap-forward development, we should also see that the overall development level of compulsory education in China is not high, and there are gaps between regions, schools and urban and rural areas. Therefore, it is an important task of education reform to promote the integration of urban and rural compulsory education, consolidate the cornerstone of fairness and promote the balanced development of education. In the reality of limited economic strength, if preschool education or high school education is included in compulsory education now, it will inevitably restrict the process of tackling key problems at the bottom of nine-year compulsory education and generally improving the balanced level.
In a few places, the impulse to extend the years of compulsory education is mostly concentrated in the stage of high school education. Popularizing high school education is an important goal and task of China's education development during the 13 th Five-Year Plan period. Last year, the Ministry of Education and other four departments jointly issued the "Senior High School Education Popularization Plan (20 17~2020)", proposing to popularize senior high school education nationwide by 2020, which aroused public concern. It was once rumored that high school would be included in the category of compulsory education. However, this is only the good wishes of some people. Popularizing senior high school education is not extending compulsory education, and there is an essential difference between them.
The urgent task facing high school education is to further increase the popularization around the strategic goal of "achieving a higher level of universal education". If high school is to be included in compulsory education, it means that high school education should be compulsory, free and universal at the same time, which is obviously not available at present. Whether junior high school graduates can choose their own education and employment is a problem worthy of in-depth study. Judging from the requirement of "free", at present, the funds for high school education in China are generally insufficient, and the task of "filling the shortcomings" is still very arduous; Judging from the requirements of "popularization", to achieve the goal of popularizing high school education, we must concentrate our efforts on ensuring basics, supplementing shortcomings and promoting fairness, and make new breakthroughs in expanding resources, optimizing structure, improving quality and perfecting mechanism. Therefore, the popularization of high school education cannot be equated with compulsory education, and it is more practical to promote the popularization of high school education than to include it in compulsory education.
Preschool education is the short board of basic education in China at present, and it faces problems such as insufficient inclusive resources, low quality of teachers and imperfect guarantee mechanism. Preschool education relies on government departments to increase investment, adhere to public welfare and inclusiveness, and actively guide and support private parks to provide inclusive services while vigorously developing public parks. However, similar to the problems faced by popularizing high school education, if three-year pre-school education is included in compulsory education, there will be contradictions caused by "compulsion". At present, some places explore the implementation of one-year preschool free education, which is a popular project and a positive choice.
In fact, the main reason why people pay attention to the length of compulsory education is that preschool education is in serious debt, the pressure of basic education is too great and the export is too narrow. In this sense, it is urgent to use the limited education funds for the most difficult and urgently needed groups and fields, improve the consolidation rate of compulsory education, provide inclusive preschool education resources and popularize high school education. It is more urgent and practical than extending the compulsory education period.