(A) the fairness of admission opportunities

In China, on the one hand, the enrollment rate of school-age students has not reached 100%, on the other hand, the dropout rate of students, especially girls, is still very high, which seriously affects the quality of our population and even the quality of the next generation. Secondly, in the field of higher education, the fairness of higher education entrance examination is still controversial. Due to the different scores of college entrance examination in different regions, students in different regions face the same test paper, but the threshold for entering colleges and universities is different. For example, in 2004, the score of the college entrance examination in Shandong Province was 600 points for the key line of liberal arts and 606 points for the key line of science; The key line of liberal arts in Jilin Province is 50 1, and the key line of science is 492. The difference between the scores of college entrance examination in the two places is more than 100. In addition, due to the high fees charged by colleges and universities, many children from poor families have lost the opportunity to enter universities. Third, the educational opportunities of the disadvantaged groups are unfair. The concept that men are superior to women in remote areas has caused the dropout rate of girls to be much higher than that of boys of the same age, and the educational situation of those disabled children is even more worrying.

(B) the issue of fairness in the education process

Can be divided into subjective and objective aspects to discuss:

Objectively speaking, it mainly refers to the allocation of educational resources. There are "two imbalances" here, that is, the allocation of educational resources between urban and rural areas is unbalanced, and the best facilities, teachers and management flow to cities; In the same area, there are key schools and weak schools, and the same school is divided into "experimental classes", "key classes" and ordinary classes. This has caused a serious imbalance between a few key schools and most non-key schools, and the tendency to choose schools has become more and more serious. In the vast rural areas, especially in economically underdeveloped areas, due to long-term insufficient investment, poor school buildings and poor teachers' quality, the enrollment rate of school-age children is low, and the development speed of education is much lower than that of cities. The artificial inclination in the allocation of educational resources actually infringes on some students' equal right to receive education and enjoy educational resources, especially children in backward areas and disadvantaged social status. The shortage of high-quality educational resources makes the task of solving the difficulties in running a school devolved to the grassroots, which leads to schools competing to "invigorate", "trade in money and power", "trade in money and learning" and "collect fees at random" from time to time, which intensifies the inequality of educational opportunities.

Subjective aspect mainly refers to whether teachers can treat different students equally in the teaching process. The unfair opportunities given by teachers to different students to speak in class and the different understanding of students' concerns will affect the effect of students' education. There are also some teachers who prefer to associate with rich children, rather than with certain families. This makes some disadvantaged children live in an unharmonious environment and affects their healthy development. The fairness of education is the most fundamental fairness as well as the most basic fairness. It is hard to imagine how a child who has received unfair education for more than ten years can treat society fairly when he sets foot on it.

Fairness of educational results

The equality of educational rights and opportunities will eventually be reflected in the fairness of educational results. The unfair educational results in China are mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, the different levels of economic development and investment in educational resources lead to different educational quality in different regions. This is manifested in the fact that the quality of education in the western region is obviously lower than that in economically developed regions. Secondly, the academic success rate of women is lower than that of men, especially in the stage of non-compulsory education, and the enrollment rate of women gradually decreases with the improvement of education level. Third, students from different family backgrounds have different chances of success. Parents' occupation, education level and family economic conditions are all important factors affecting students' success. Statistics show that students from cadre families and intellectual families are much more likely to succeed in their studies than students from peasant families.

1, unbalanced allocation of educational resources

For the huge development gap between regions and between urban and rural areas formed in history, the distribution of educational resources should be reflected as follows: first, the rules should be fair to avoid the gap from widening; The second is to lean as far as possible to the backward areas, thus actively narrowing the gap. Since the founding of New China, in the operation of the planned economic system, although the unbalanced allocation of educational resources between the eastern and western regions and between urban and rural areas has changed, the development gap between different regions has widened the gap between regions and between urban and rural areas after the reform and opening up.

One of the traditional reasons for this imbalance is to emphasize the direct utilitarian value of education, hoping to quickly change the backward situation of industry and technology. Therefore, the actual focus of education lies in higher education. The distribution of educational resources under the planned system is based on the overall interests of the country, not on the needs of local social and economic development. Therefore, despite the policy of balanced layout for a period of time, the regional gap has not been effectively narrowed. For example, many provinces in the central and western regions have not had a key university for a long time.

Emphasis on higher education embodies the direct pursuit of "efficiency" by the state. Due to the monopoly of educational resources and lack of financial resources, basic education has been weak for a long time. Ignoring the reality of basic education not only seriously damages educational equity, but also is inefficient for economic development due to the constraints of low national quality and labor quality.

2. The key school system has aggravated the unfairness of education.

Since 1980s, with the gradual popularization of nine-year compulsory education, especially the decentralization of basic education management, the process of education democratization has been greatly accelerated. This process is also restricted by the contradiction of "fairness-efficiency", and basic education is faced with this choice: giving priority to meeting the educational needs of most children, so that all children can get the necessary education smoothly; Or through fierce competition and screening, let a small number of people get better education? In fact, we choose to take the elite education route of cultivating "top students". The system of setting up key schools at different levels has aggravated the imbalance of internal resource allocation in the field of basic education, led to the widening of the gap between schools in the region, and even artificially created the gap, resulting in a large number of "poor schools" and "garbage schools" with weak foundations. The vast majority of key schools are located in cities and towns, which is conducive to the further study of urban students. This highly competitive education, which divides schools and students into different grades and selects a few "top students" at the expense of most children, runs counter to the nature and purpose of compulsory education and is the institutional basis of "exam-oriented education", which is being corrected and changed at present. However, the huge gap between public schools has become a new cause of unfair education that citizens are concerned about at present.

3. "Urban Orientation" in Education Policy

For a long time, under the urban-rural dual structure and highly centralized planning system, a value orientation of "city center" has been formed, ignoring regional differences and urban-rural differences: national public policies give priority to meeting or even only reflect and embody the interests of urban people, such as the past grain and oil supply policy, employment, medical care, housing, labor insurance and other social welfare. With the process of urbanization and the gradual establishment of market economy system, this concept is obviously outdated; However, as a harmonious mindset, it still has great inertia and still exists in social decision-making. This should be recognized and corrected accordingly.

For example, ignoring the huge differences in educational environment and resources between children in urban and rural areas, and children in developed and poor areas, it is undoubtedly unfair to students in rural and remote areas to formulate a unified national syllabus, unified textbooks and unified standards mainly based on the academic ability of urban students. According to many surveys, the second biggest reason for rural students to drop out of school (second only to economic burden) is that the teaching difficulty is too high, which makes many students incompetent and become academic failures. [xv] This "unfair rule" leads to the "unfair starting point" of educational opportunities. Behind it is the value orientation of "city center".

4. Unfair access to higher education.

The current unified college entrance examination system in China is fair in form-everyone is equal before the score. However, because the actual admission of students is marked by provincial quotas, the admission quotas of provinces and cities are not evenly distributed according to the number of candidates, but based on the principle of giving priority to urban candidates formed under the planned system, so the admission scores of the same test paper are very different, which intensifies the existing urban and rural education inequality.

1998 Taiyuan technical secondary school admitted 376 points for non-rural students, while farmers scored 532 points and 529 points according to different scores, with the largest difference of 156 points, which caused strong dissatisfaction. [xvi] In recent years, the huge gap between the admission lines of colleges and universities in various provinces and cities has also aroused great concern in society.

Guizhou Province, the poorest province in China, has a per capita GDP of 2,323 yuan (Beijing18,000 yuan, 7.75 times that of Guizhou), 480 points for undergraduate science and engineering, and 5 14 points for literature and history (including foreign languages), which is also higher than Beijing.

In addition, some improper policies and institutional arrangements are also the reasons for unfair education within the region and between classes. For example, due to the decentralization of rural basic education management authority below the county level, the education gap between towns and villages has widened, and the township finance in some poor areas is unable to support basic education. Another example is the issue of education fees. The high cost of education has become a serious problem that restricts the development of rural education and the children of poor families to receive higher education.

First, the distribution of financial resources for compulsory education is seriously uneven. From a regional perspective, the financial responsibility of compulsory education at the grass-roots level, the huge gap between regional economic development and financial resources, and the lack of transfer payments from central and provincial governments to compulsory education have made the inequality of financial resources of compulsory education in China reach an alarming level. From 65438 to 0998, comparing the per capita education resources of various provinces (cities, districts), we can see that the per capita budget of primary school students in China is 378 yuan. The highest is Shanghai, 1957 yuan; The lowest is Henan, 202 yuan. Compared with the county level, this gap is even greater. The huge gap between funds and teaching conditions will inevitably lead to a huge gap in enrollment rate, especially in the quality of education. The gross enrollment rate of higher education in Beijing and Shanghai is about 40%, while that of junior middle schools in Guizhou is only 52%.

At the same time, the inequality between urban and rural areas has intensified. The inequality between urban and rural areas is not only manifested in the gap of school education resources, but also in the burden of education funds and educational discrimination against rural residents. The Education Law stipulates that the surcharge for education shall be borne by farmers, and the collection methods are different. For urban residents, most places do not have this responsibility. At the same time, the education law also stipulates that cities and towns shall be borne by the government, while rural areas shall be responsible, partly by raising funds from farmers. As a result, there are great differences between urban schools and rural schools in terms of teachers, funds and teaching conditions. 1998, the average annual budget of junior high schools in China is 8 13 yuan, while that in rural areas is only 486 yuan; Primary school students have budget funds. Urban 520 yuan, rural 3 1 1 yuan. Even in economically backward areas, there are great differences between urban and rural areas. During the period of 1998, the average annual budget for junior middle schools in Guizhou Province was 560 yuan in urban areas and only 30 1 yuan in rural areas.

Inequality among residents is becoming more and more prominent. Due to the increase in tuition fees and unemployment, it is increasingly difficult for poor families to pay for their children's education. In the mid-1990s, there were 54,000 poor primary and secondary school students in Beijing. Nationwide, about 60% of students in poor areas drop out of school because of family financial difficulties, while only 2% and 3% of students in poor rural areas reduce tuition and fees.

Second, opportunities for higher education are unevenly distributed among regions. One of the purposes of implementing the unified college entrance examination in China is to maintain the fair distribution of admission opportunities for higher education. However, with the widening gap in the development level of higher education between regions, the problem of unequal opportunities for higher education between regions has become more and more prominent. For example, in 200 1 year, the enrollment places of Peking University and Tsinghua in Beijing accounted for 13% and 18% of the total respectively, while the school-age population of senior high school graduates in Beijing only accounted for 0.9% of the whole country. In other words, the probability of Beijing students being admitted to Peking University Tsinghua is more than ten times the national average.