Tuition and miscellaneous fees refer to the fees charged by schools to students. In 1950s, China exempted primary and secondary school students from tuition fees. People's Republic of China (PRC) Compulsory Education Law (Draft) published by 1986 clearly stipulates that the state implements nine-year compulsory education, and students receiving compulsory education are free of tuition fees.

Therefore, in primary and secondary schools, tuition and miscellaneous fees are a conventional name, which actually only includes miscellaneous fees. All kinds of funds needed for junior colleges and technical secondary schools are allocated by the government, and tuition and fees are not charged, which has played a positive role in the development of higher and technical secondary education in the past.

There are always different opinions on whether there is essential difference between tuition and fees. China's compulsory education law seems to distinguish between tuition and miscellaneous fees. For example, Article 2 of the Compulsory Education Law stipulates: "Compulsory education is an education that all school-age children and adolescents must receive, and it is a public welfare undertaking that the state must guarantee.

The implementation of compulsory education, free of tuition and fees. The state establishes a mechanism to guarantee the funds for compulsory education to ensure the implementation of the compulsory education system. Article 17 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Compulsory Education Law stipulates: "Schools that implement compulsory education may collect miscellaneous fees." If there is no essential difference between "tuition" and "miscellaneous fees", these two legal provisions may be contradictory.

Practice has proved that collecting miscellaneous fees has become the most irregular and irregular charging behavior in the management of compulsory education, and it has become the main field of overcharging and arbitrary charges, which has greatly damaged the social image of compulsory education.

However, in the case of insufficient state investment, miscellaneous fees support the operation of most primary and secondary schools, especially rural primary and secondary schools, and become their main or only source of public funds.

In some primary and secondary schools, tuition and fees are not divided, and even expressed as "tuition and fees", which is a concept, rather than using tuition and fees alone.

Take "Notice of the State Council on Deepening the Reform of Rural Compulsory Education Funding Guarantee Mechanism" as an example, the document has the following statement: all tuition and miscellaneous fees for rural compulsory education students are exempted, textbooks are provided free of charge to students from poor families, and living expenses for boarders are subsidized. It can be seen that the document does not make a clear distinction between tuition fees and miscellaneous fees for compulsory education.