First of all, the development trend in the world: the state finances support early childhood education.
/kloc-Before the middle of the 0/9th century, preschool education was always a private activity, but it gradually developed into a public responsibility in the 20th century. [1] State intervention in early childhood education has become a worldwide development trend. There are many ways for the government to intervene in preschool education, so it is of course very important to formulate policies and strengthen management (such as strict examination and approval system of preschool institutions and strengthening asset monitoring; Formulate quality standards for preschool education and supervise their implementation; Establish teacher qualification and training system. ), but public financial support is also an important way for the state to intervene in early childhood education.
OECD countries mainly support early childhood education through public finance. In some countries, regardless of parents' employment status and income, early childhood education is free; In other countries, financial support from the state goes hand in hand with payment according to parents' income, and the part paid by parents generally does not exceed 30% of the expenses. [2] Although some other developed countries do not manage like OECD countries, they also assume the government's responsibility for early childhood education through various forms of support. These methods include:
1. National education extends downward. This is the practice of many countries including the United States. Since 2006, the Macao SAR has extended free education to 1 ~ 2 years of preschool education. Taiwan Province Province has also launched a plan to extend the national education for one year (K Education), which has been tried out from "outlying islands" (Penghu, Lianjiang, Jinmen, etc.) since 2004. ) and areas where aborigines are concentrated, giving priority to helping areas with weak resources and weak culture, and then gradually extending them to the whole island.
2. The state allocated special funds to support early compensatory education for socially disadvantaged children. Such as the early start plan of the United States and the guaranteed start plan of the United Kingdom. The government owns a certain number of parks. Give financial subsidies to non-profit private preschool education institutions recognized by the government. 4. Provide care and education support for young children's families through various means (such as tax rebates and subsidies), and so on.
Second, the reasons why the state finances support early childhood education
At present, although some countries have included the education of children aged 5 years or even 4-3 years into the category of national education, on the whole, preschool education is not compulsory and still belongs to "non-compulsory education". Since education is non-compulsory, why not "completely give it to the market" as some of us think? Educational economists demonstrate the rationality and necessity of government financial investment in early childhood education from two aspects: the positive external benefits of early childhood education and the defects of early childhood education market.
(a) Compensation for the positive and external benefits of early childhood education
Whether preschool education has positive external benefits is an important basis for whether the government should give financial subsidies. Externality is an important concept in economics, which means that if an economic behavior has an impact (gain or loss) on other consumers (third parties) incidentally, and the corresponding cost is not reflected in the market price, externalities will appear. Behaviors beneficial to other consumers have positive externalities, and vice versa. According to the law revealed by economics, in the field of positive externalities, there will inevitably be insufficient investment. Because this kind of investment not only brings benefits to the parties, but also brings benefits to other parties, but the parties can only determine the investment level according to their own benefits, so this investment level must be less than the social optimal investment level. In this case, the government's financial input becomes very necessary.
So, does preschool education have positive externalities? Are there any other beneficiaries besides investors (families)? A large number of studies show that the beneficiaries of early childhood education are not only children and families, but also the country. To sum up, preschool education has a long-term positive effect on the development of people's various abilities, which can improve their future production capacity and economic growth capacity, improve the quality of national citizens, and improve the cultural and moral quality of the whole nation; Early childhood education can improve women's employment opportunities, promote gender equality, reduce the number of poor people and reduce the cost of social assistance; Early childhood education is conducive to breaking the vicious circle of "substituting poverty" and promoting social equity.
Among all kinds of studies on the cost-benefit of early education, the work of David Weikardt and his colleagues is the most representative and convincing. Since 1960s, they have followed up 123 children from low-income families for nearly 40 years. This study set up an experimental group and a control group. Children in the experimental group received Gao Zhan-Perry early education program 1~2 years. This study investigates the effect of high-quality preschool education from five aspects: academic performance, economic situation, crime rate, family relationship and health. It is found that compared with the control group, the children in the experimental group have high academic performance, high employment rate and economic income, low crime rate, harmonious family relationship and low drug abuse rate.
Perry's research shows that the investment in early childhood education is the public investment with the lowest cost and the highest rate of return. When the child reaches the age of 27, the return on investment is 1: 7. 16. The recent cost-benefit analysis of this study found that when these children are 40 years old, the overall return on investment has reached 1: 17.07. Among them, the rate of return for children is 1: 4. 17, while the rate of return for society is 1: 12.9. Detailed analysis shows that 88% of social returns come from the reduction of crime rate; 4% comes from the reduction of education expenditure (special education and consultation, etc. ); 7% comes from the increase of income tax; 1% comes from the reduction of social welfare expenditure. Studies in other countries (such as Canada) have reached similar conclusions.
James Heckman, the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Economics and a professor at the University of Chicago, summed up the results of similar research, and pointed out in the article "Policies for Cultivating Human Capital" that, other things being equal, investing 1 USD in one's childhood will bring more benefits than investing the same amount after childhood. The best investment policy is that the younger a child is, the more money he invests, and it will increase with his growth. "Guiding human capital investment to young children is a more effective use of social public funds." Therefore, the education policy analysis of OECD 1999 points out that "early childhood education is the first investment in lifelong learning, right? A far-reaching policy aid. " The topic of this year's summary report on early childhood education is "Early childhood education and conservation: the education stage that benefits most from investment". [5] This beneficiary is not only the child and his family, but also the whole society. Therefore, preschool education is public welfare and a "social welfare undertaking", and the state financial support is a matter of course.
The United States, Britain and OECD countries are all countries with very mature market economy development, but they all choose the policy of state financial support for early childhood education, which should be said to be the recognition of the public welfare (positive externalities) of early childhood education, in line with the above economic principles.
(B) to make up for the defects of the early childhood education market
The defects of the supply and demand sides and their market exchange process determine that the market mechanism has limited regulatory effect on early childhood education. The government must use various means, especially economic means, to make up for its own shortcomings.
1. Market problems of preschool education caused by information asymmetry.
People often think that the free market is an equal market, and free competition will inevitably improve the quality of products. But this is not necessarily the case. When the information possessed by buyers and sellers is not completely equal, the transaction is actually unequal. Three American professors who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for using asymmetric information theory to analyze the market found that in real life, market subjects (buyers and sellers) could not have complete market information. Information asymmetry will inevitably lead to greater interests of information owners and harm the interests of the other party. Moreover, when the seller has more product information than the buyer, low-quality products will drive out high-quality products, so that the quality of products in the market will continue to decline, and there will be a phenomenon of "bad money chasing good money". At the same time, consumers' trust in the market will be destroyed, which will eventually lead to the shrinking of the market and the decline of the welfare level of the whole society. Compared with the general commodity market, the pre-school education market is more prone to information asymmetry between service providers and buyers. Because parents of young children often lack professional knowledge, they can't distinguish the quality of childcare institutions, and they are easily tempted by exaggerated propaganda and some superficial phenomena of suppliers. In addition, it is difficult to grasp the situation of the whole preschool education market, it is difficult for parents to make rational choices, and high prices may not necessarily bring real high quality. In particular, although the investment in early childhood education has the greatest income compared with any later education stage, compared with other education stages, its investment income (especially as human resources investment income) is relatively hidden and difficult to detect; Secondly, it has the characteristics of "long linearity" and "integration", and its effect often takes 20 years to appear, and it is often combined with the effect of follow-up education. If it is not specially studied, it is often difficult to show it alone. These characteristics will directly affect parents' judgment on the value of early childhood education, thus affecting their choice behavior.
A number of surveys show that although parents are enthusiastic about early childhood education, their enthusiasm is generally lower than that of other schools, but their sensitivity to its price is generally higher than that of other schools. Generally speaking, being cheap, convenient and close to home are the main principles for many parents to choose preschool institutions, but the quality is often neglected. At present, in China, some illegal kindergartens have been repeatedly banned, and even some low-quality and low-cost kindergartens have crowded out kindergartens with reasonable prices and high quality. Mainly because there is such a buyer's market that only pays attention to price and ignores quality, only asks for care and ignores education, and lacks the ability to judge quality.
2. Preschool education market can not meet the requirements of educational equity. Fairness is a reasonable principle that should be followed in dealing with various interests in social and economic life. In the field of economics, the core of fairness is resource allocation. The core of educational equity is the equality of educational opportunities and the freedom of educational choice, that is, "the fairness of resource distribution". Equality of educational opportunities cannot be achieved through the educational market, because the market follows an equal exchange mechanism driven by private interests. In other words, the price is based on quality, high quality and good price. Education is a kind of human capital investment, which is obviously restricted by the current economic situation of each family. Poor families often lack sources of investment, which leads to children's lack of opportunities to receive or get quality education, thus affecting their future study and development and forming a vicious circle of poverty from generation to generation.
Paul samuelson, a famous American economist, pointed out when analyzing the causes of poverty: "The difference in income is mainly caused by the amount of wealth. ? Compared with the difference of property, the difference of personal ability can be ignored. ? Low-level or working-class parents often can't afford their children to go to business school or medical school-these children are excluded from the whole high-paying career. " In fact, the difference in educational opportunities between children from poor families and children from rich families is not only reflected in the forced "choice" of higher education, but also begins with early childhood education. This obviously does not meet the basic requirements of promoting social equity.
In addition, unequal educational opportunities violate the requirements of efficiency. Children from poor families may not be able to give full play to their intelligence because of lack of opportunities for receiving good education, resulting in a waste of human resources. In this case, if the government provides education from the perspective of redistribution and participates in human capital investment, it will help to improve the level of fairness and efficiency. Government intervention is the basic means to maintain educational equity and realize social equity.
In the past, the concept of educational equity (first of all, equal educational opportunities) was often used in compulsory education. But in recent decades, this concept has entered the field of preschool education, because it is the real starting point of a person's life.
Third, increase financial input-the urgent need for the development of early childhood education in China
The Fourth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee put forward the goal of "building a harmonious socialist society". To build a harmonious society, social equity is the foundation and educational equity is the starting point. Under the condition of complete education market, the gap of people's education corresponds to the gap of income. Family income directly affects educational opportunities, and educational opportunities affect family income by affecting people's development. In this way, the "Matthew effect" of the gap between the rich and the poor may continue indefinitely, worsen the pattern of social interests, and bury hidden dangers of contradictions, tensions and conflicts between urban and rural areas, regions and strata, which runs counter to Scientific Outlook on Development's concept of building a harmonious socialist society.
At present, in the reality that the only child is the majority in China, a child affects the hearts of at least six adults (parents, grandparents, grandparents) in three families. According to statistics, there were about 510600 preschool children (aged 3-6) in China in 2003, involving at least 300 million adults. Preschool education is the "popular project" with the most social welfare and the most direct embodiment of "Theory of Three Represents" thought! In order to "build a harmonious socialist society", we must attach importance to the role of preschool education and guarantee the rights of preschool education from the system and policy. Article 19 of the Constitution of People's Republic of China (PRC) stipulates that the state shall establish various schools, popularize compulsory primary education, develop secondary education, vocational education and higher education, and develop preschool education.
Article 17 of the Education Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that the state implements a school education system of preschool education, primary education, secondary education and higher education. The responsibility of the state to develop preschool education stipulated in the Constitution and the Education Law reflects the concern for children and people.
With the rapid economic development, the economic strength is constantly enhanced, the goal of popularizing nine-year compulsory education is basically realized, and the public's demand for early childhood education is increasing. How should the reform of China's early childhood education system be changed? How should institutional innovation be embodied? What should be the reasonable trend of preschool education development in China? We believe that the main problems existing in the development of preschool education in China in the past are insufficient overall investment in preschool education funds, unfair distribution of limited preschool education resources and low efficiency. While the overall investment of the country is increasing year by year, and social funds are widely absorbed to develop early childhood education to meet the needs of the public, unfair resource allocation and inefficiency should be the main aspects of reform.
The unfair and inefficient allocation of resources is related to the investment system. It should be admitted that there are problems in the investment system of early childhood education in China (only in public kindergartens). This may have its historical rationality. But today, the disadvantages of this investment system are more and more obvious, and reform is imperative. In China's economic system reform, it is often said that "the stock is unchanged, but the increment is revitalized", which has certain enlightenment to the reform of preschool education system. We suggest that:
1. Public parks invested by the state should effectively play the role of demonstration and training, so that the state financial input can benefit more children through direct and indirect channels.
2. Enterprises and kindergartens as unit welfare should be converted into social welfare after being separated from the unit. When establishing the public finance system, the state should consider bringing it into the social welfare system in an appropriate way.
3. The incremental part is aimed at vulnerable groups, because a large number of studies show that early childhood education has the highest benefit for vulnerable groups. By means of transfer payment, the state finance gives priority to the implementation of one-year compulsory pre-school education in rural areas, remote areas and areas where socially disadvantaged groups are concentrated, and gradually expands it to all children conditionally.
(This report is based on the paper "Development Trend of Preschool Education in the World: National Financial Support for Preschool Education" by Cai and Cai, originally published in Preschool Education Research, No.6, 2007).