In order to implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, discuss the high-quality development path of private education in the context of building a strong country in education, summarize the new experience, new achievements and new trends in various fields of private education, and build a platform for pooling resources, cooperation, exchange, reform and innovation, the "13th (2023) China Private Education Development Conference" hosted by the China Association for Private Education was held in Beijing from December 9 to 10. With the theme of "Building a Strong Country in Education, What is Private Education?", the conference consisted of the opening ceremony, the council, plenary sessions and parallel forums, including 15 important speeches by leaders, 2 keynote reports, 11 expert reports and 30 special speeches. The speeches, speeches and reports of experts and scholars will be published one after another. 
Education requires the power of the people
Speech at the 13th China Conference on the Development of Private Education.
Zhu Yongxin, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and executive vice chairman of the Democratic Progressive Association.
December 9, 2023).
Comrades and friends:
Good morning!
It is a great pleasure to be invited to participate in the 13th China Private Education Development Conference held by the China Association for Private Education. Here, on behalf of the Democratic Progressive Party, I would like to express my warm congratulations on the convening of the meetingI would like to extend my sincere greetings to all the comrades in the private education sector who attended this meeting
**The general secretary pointed out that "the prosperity of education leads to the prosperity of the country, and the strength of education leads to the strengthening of the country" and "education has always been the key factor in the rise of a strong country". Private education is an important part of China's education and has made important contributions to the development of China's economy, society and education. As a socialist party with Chinese characteristics with education as its main sector, 60% of the nearly 200,000 members of the DPP come from the education sector, and are known as the "Education Party" and "Teachers Party". The Association has an indissoluble bond with the development of China's private education and has made important contributions to the development of China's private education. In the 80s of the last century, when China had a large population and an underdeveloped economy, it was necessary to rely on "walking on two legs", and the people educated the people, and the people actively called for the promotion of social forces to run schools. In 1984, with the care and support of Mr. Lei Jieqiong, then vice chairman of the Democratic Progressive Association, Tang Youxiang, a member of the Democratic Progressive Association, founded the first private high school in New China in Huzhou, Zhejiang, which became an important milestone event in the history of China's private education. In 1989, the Ministry of Social Services was set up to give full play to the advantages of the education sector to carry out educational services and "social schooling", and to hold lectures, training courses and schools to help the masses learn. Under the appeal and promotion of the Democratic Progressive Party for many years, various types of private educational institutions at all levels have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and have become an important part of the socialist education cause. Many comrades present here today, as well as the organizers and operators of private schools, such as Hu Wei, Qin He, Ren Fang, and Li Xiaoxuan, are all members of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy.
At the end of the last century, with the implementation of the strategy of governing the country according to the law, the DPP realized that there was a lack of legal basis for the encouragement, guidance and management of private education at all levels, and the formulation and promulgation of the private education law became an urgent need for the development of private education, and it was also a prerequisite for ensuring the rule of law. In 1997, it submitted the "Proposal on Formulating a Private Education Law as Soon as Possible to Promote the Healthy Development of Private Education", which was highly concerned by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the State Education Commission, and was listed as a key work to follow up. In November 2002, Suzhou City, where I worked, hosted a forum on "Diversification, Legalization and Private Education", inviting comrades from the National People's Education Committee and the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee to participate and listen to the opinions and suggestions of experts and private education organizers in person. In December of the same year, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress formally passed the Law on the Promotion of Private Education.
After the promulgation and implementation of the law, according to the situation of the development of China's education, the DPP continued to make suggestions and suggestions for the high-quality development of private education, and submitted to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) the "Development Dilemma of China's Private Education and Its Countermeasures", "Proposal on Supporting Private Schools to Strengthen the Construction of the Teacher Team" and other party proposals, and made a speech at the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on "Deepening the Reform of the Education Management System and Promoting the Healthy Development of Private Education".
It is particularly worth mentioning that the China Association for Private Education was also founded under the leadership of the Democratic Progressive Association, especially the former chairman Comrade Xu Jialu. The original place of registration of the China Association for Non-Government Education was the China Association for Non-Government Education**. In 2006, the Association submitted to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) the Proposal on the Establishment of the China Association for Private Education. In May 2008, the China Association for Private Education was established. Comrade Xu Jialu served as the honorary president of the association and made a report at the inaugural meeting, and Comrade Yan Junqi, then vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and chairman of the Democratic Progressive Association, attended the inaugural meeting. Comrade Wang Zuoshu, the former full-time vice chairman of the Association for Promoting Democracy, served as the first executive vice president and the second president of the association. After years of exploration and accumulation, the China Association of Private Education has become an influential industry organization in the field of education in China, and has made extremely important contributions to promoting the healthy development of private education.
Since entering the new era, the party has attached great importance to the development of education. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China listed education, science and technology, and talents as the three basic and strategic supports for building a modern socialist country in an all-round way, emphasizing that "we must adhere to the ...... of giving priority to the development of education."Accelerate the construction of a strong country in education", and from the strategic height of "education is the great plan of the country and the party", it is required to adhere to the people-centered development of education, accelerate the construction of a high-quality education system, develop quality education, promote educational fairness, and strive to run an education that satisfies the people. As far as social forces are concerned, the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the need to "guide and standardize the development of private education". In the face of the new situation and tasks, we need to think about how to correctly understand the value and significance of private education in the new eraHow to accurately grasp the orientation and coordinates of private education in the new pattern?How can private education further demonstrate its unique role on the new journey?
Next, I would like to discuss with you a few personal views, and ask you to criticize and correct the inappropriateness.
1. Private education has made important contributions to the country's education
In the early 80s of the 20th century, China's social forces began to re-emerge in running schools, and it has gone through more than 40 years so far. Over the past 40 years, with the strong support of the party and the world, under the common concern of all sectors of society, and through the perseverance and efforts of all colleagues on the private education front, all kinds of private education at all levels in China have gone through an extraordinary development path from small to large, from weak to strong. By the end of 2022, there were 17 private schools of all levels and types across the country830,000 schools, with a total of 5,282 students70,000 people, accounting for 34 of the total number of schools and students in the country37% and 1805%。At the same time, a large number of social and educational institutions are also run by the private sector. It can be said that private education has become an important part of China's educational undertakings, and it is indeed "a landmark achievement of reform and opening up in the new era".
The practice since the reform and opening up shows that the rapid development of private education has played an important role in increasing educational opportunities, meeting diverse needs, promoting educational equity, stimulating educational vitality and promoting the construction of a learning society.
First, the supply of education has been expanded. After more than 40 years of construction and accumulation, social forces have run schools covering all stages from early childhood education to higher education, forming a development pattern of private education that pays equal attention to academic education and non-academic education, general education and vocational education, and greatly accelerated the popularization of basic education and higher education. In the process of popularizing compulsory education, the rapid development of preschool education, and the popularization and popularization of higher education in China, private education has played an irreplaceable role and made important contributions.
Second, it has enriched the form of education. The rise and development of social forces in running schools has promoted the formation of a school-running system with first-class education, social participation, pluralistic school-running subjects and diverse forms of school-running, which has enriched the educational pattern and stimulated the vitality of education. The many fruitful reforms and explorations carried out by private schools in the aspects of education financing system, modern school system, and talent training model have accumulated rich experience and provided effective reference for deepening the reform of the school-running system, management system and education mechanism of public schools.
Third, it meets diverse needs. The diversified and characteristic development of private education, especially the sudden emergence of international education in many developed regions, has increasingly become an important part of high-quality education, which can better meet the personalized educational needs of the people. At the same time, the development of schools for the children of migrant workers in urban areas and inclusive private schools in rural areas, which are under the management of private schools, has also played an important role in solving the problem of educating the children of the migrant population and the schooling of left-behind children in rural areas, and has effectively expanded the opportunities for disadvantaged groups to receive education on an equal footing.
Fourth, it has promoted education consumption. The construction and development of various types of private schools at all levels has not only solved the problem of direct employment for more than 10 million people, but also effectively stimulated various educational investment and consumption activities, and promoted regional economic and social development. The development of private education has also led to the construction of trillions of infrastructure, driven the development of many peripheral industries, indirectly created a large number of jobs, and formed many new education industries, new formats, new products and new business models.
In addition,Private education also has a special role to play in improving educational equity。The essence of educational equity is to allow each student's right to education to be treated without discrimination and fully guaranteed, but there are urban-rural gaps, regional gaps and inter-school gaps in the allocation of public education resources, as well as the pedagogical characteristics of student differentiation, so that the promotion and improvement of educational equity not only needs the power of the world, but also the power of the people. This positive role of improving educational equity through market mechanism is an important embodiment of the legitimacy of the existence of private education, and it also has a very important value for the development of educational theory, which deserves more in-depth study.
2. Private education is still an important force in China's education in the new era
China is in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time. In the process of development, some private schools do have problems such as "too strong profit-seeking, insufficient public welfare" and non-standardization. In recent years, in response to the new situation and new contradictions in the private education industry, a series of new regulatory measures have been introduced and implemented at the national level, which has comprehensively strengthened the school-running norms and administrative supervision of private education. Judging from the actual situation, it is very necessary and completely correct to adopt these normative measures in order to ensure the public welfare attribute of education and maintain a good education ecology.
It should be emphasized that development requires norms, and norms are for development;Norms are the means, and development is the goal. Therefore, under the new situation, we need to re-understand the status and role of private education, and further clarify the functions and responsibilities of private education based on a specific stage of development. First of all, from the perspective of the current situation of education development, although China has built the world's largest education system, and the overall level of education modernization has entered the ranks of the world's top countries, there is still a big gap between China's education and the world's major education powers. For example, the average number of years of education for the population aged 25 and above in China is only 95 years, with the average of an educational powerhouse (127 years) difference of 32 years;The proportion of employed people in high-skilled positions in China is only 196%, compared to the average of the 15 educational powerhouses (close to 50%), the gap is significant. Therefore, private education can continue to contribute to the improvement of the overall level of education. Secondly, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education in China, there are still regional differences in the level of education popularization at the high school level, and the level of popularization of higher education still needs to be improved. Therefore, education still bears an arduous responsibility to generally improve the scientific and cultural quality of the whole people, strengthen the support of high-quality and high-skilled human resources, and promote the high-quality development of the population. Private education, which accounts for one-fifth of the total number of students at all levels and in all categories, is also a heavy responsibility. In short, in the historical process of promoting the construction of an educational power and promoting the high-quality development of the population, the role of private education should not be ignored.
Various analyses show that to build a high-quality education system for the future and run an education that satisfies the people, it is necessary not only to ensure the public welfare and fairness of education, but also to enrich the effective supply of education and increase the variety of education choices. In the new stage of development, it is necessary not only to reasonably regulate the scale of private education development and continuously strengthen the public welfare attributes of private education, but also to actively guide all types of private schools at all levels to reshape their functions and rebuild their advantages, stimulate endogenous power in deepening reform, and achieve high-quality development in optimizing positioning.
Third, private education should play an active role in the future society
Looking back on history, we can see that the reason why private education has made great progress at different stages is inseparable from the effective response of the majority of organizers (school operators). In the new historical stage, driven by unprecedented scientific and technological changes, profound changes have taken place in China's social form and educational needs. ** When talking about the path of implementing the strategy of strengthening the country through education in the new stage, the general secretary emphasized that "it is necessary to adhere to the system concept and promote the reform of education methods, school running models, management systems and guarantee mechanisms as a whole". In the future society, in order to achieve better survival and development of private education, it is necessary to fully grasp the pulse of the times, respond to the rapidly changing educational needs with innovative concepts and creative practices, and actively forge ahead and take the initiative in the great process of promoting China's educational modernization and accelerating the construction of an educational power, and play a better role and play a greater role.
First of all, private education should give full play to the advantages of flexible educational organization and devote itself to the construction of diversified learning centers. In the new era, education is facing both hard and soft changes, and the space for learning and educational activities is undergoing revolutionary changes. In recent years, I have done some research and thinking on this issue, and expressed this view in books such as "Future School" and "Subtraction of Education": the house of traditional education can no longer let go of future education, and we must reconstruct a new house, and this new house must break the structure of traditional schools to achieve real changes in the structure of education. Private education has a general practical basis in actively adapting to such changes, and should also win the opportunity in this new change. In practice, it is necessary to adopt modern education technology and credit banking system extensively and deeply through positive institutional reforms, build learning centers that reflect the new concept of education and reflect the new ecology of education, and realize the vigorous development of social education, continuing education and non-formal education in which everyone can learn, learn everywhere and learn at any time, promote the all-round development and lifelong development of people, and promote the overall improvement of the level of national human resource development.
Secondly, private education should give full play to its own resource endowment and the advantages of the school-running mechanism, and actively participate in the systematic cultivation of innovative talents. At present, the state is simultaneously promoting the "addition" of science education in the "double reduction" policy of education, and promoting the high-quality development of education, science and technology, and talents in an integrated manner. For the "double reduction" policy, my understanding is: not only to solve the problem of too long time and excessive burden, but also to use "subtraction" thinking to give full play to the advantages of more meaningful places. At the fifth collective study of the Politburo, the general secretary particularly emphasized that "it is necessary to further strengthen science education and engineering education, and strengthen the independent training of top-notch innovative talents". Improving the whole-chain training mechanism of "scientific selection, connection, systematic training, and co-education and sharing" for the cultivation of top-notch innovative talents also requires the active participation of private education. For example, we have many off-campus institutions that have accumulated rich experience in talent reserve, curriculum development and quality improvement, and now they should not stop and disperse, but can exist as a learning center, as a provider of public service products such as procurement courses, and contribute to the cultivation of innovative and top-notch talents and the construction of a high-quality education system. For example, gifted education in Hong Kong is an educational institution organized by non-governmental education forces, which supports and purchases services. Private schools at all levels should take the reform of the educational evaluation system as a breakthrough point to accelerate the construction of a system and mechanism that integrates the selection, training and evaluation of top-notch innovative talents. Private schools should participate in improving the ecological chain of innovation literacy and innovation ability training, support universities and middle schools to cooperate in opening various characteristic classes, vigorously cultivate the interests and subject expertise of the majority of young people, and do a good job in the early discovery and training of top-notch innovative talents. It is necessary to further give play to the role of high school schools and colleges and universities in the key training stage, explore the mode of independent evaluation and selection of top-notch innovative talents in basic disciplines, and open up special channels for students with expertise and even students in partial subjects.
Third, private education should give full play to the advantages of being good at accumulating social charitable resources and better provide all kinds of public welfare education services. Charity education is a form of private education serving the society, and its special status is becoming increasingly apparent. It is also an important directional trend for the healthy development of private education in China. Westlake University, where Shi Yigong is the president, and the non-profit **Yao University of Science and Technology, organized by the famous entrepreneur Cao Dewang, are typical cases. As an important form of "third distribution", charity education allows all levels and types of educational institutions and recipients who use charitable donation funds to become beneficiaries. Therefore, by improving the income distribution structure of the whole society and promoting social equity, private education can produce significant positive externalities. At present, the scale of charitable donations in China is relatively small, and the total amount of donations invested in education in 2020 is 4502.9 billion yuan, accounting for 21 percent of the total donations58%。From the perspective of development trends, with the vigorous encouragement of charitable donations and the continuous improvement of the preferential tax policy system, the amount of donations for education in China will grow rapidly in the future, which puts forward new requirements for how to make good use of donated funds in the field of education, especially how to form an environment to support the development of non-profit private education from a broader perspective, which is both an important opportunity and a new test for the development of private education.
Finally, private education should give full play to the advantages of diverse types of schools and abundant resources, and better participate in the construction of a learning society and a learning country. As China is entering the stage of aging social development, it is of great significance to improve the education system that serves the whole people to enjoy lifelong learning and run an education that satisfies the people. "Building a modern education system that serves the whole people for lifelong learning" is one of the main development goals of education reform and development in 2035 as determined by the "China Education Modernization 2035". Facing the future society, all types of private schools at all levels, especially the organizers and operators of private colleges and universities, can and should give full play to the advantages of diverse types of schools and rich resources for running schools, adhere to the educational concept of "facing everyone and suitable for everyone", and strive to create a diversified, multi-level and multi-type lifelong learning resource supply system, so as to expand their own living space and realize the transformation and development of schools in promoting the construction of an education system that serves the whole people for lifelong learning and participating in the construction of a learning society and a learning country.
Comrades, education is the great plan of the Party and the country. Under the background of the new era, China's education has undergone structural changes. Based on the present and facing the future, we must learn to look at education from the political point of view, grasp education from the perspective of people's livelihood, and run education from the perspective of law. Education needs the power of the people, and private education also needs the understanding and support of the society. In order to further support the healthy development of private education,We hopeAll levels and the whole society further realize the indispensable and important role of private education in China's education system in the new era, implement the "Law on the Promotion of Private Education" and the "Regulations on the Implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Private Education", fully support the reform and development of private education, protect the legitimate rights and interests of private schools in accordance with the law, and help private schools solve the difficulties and problems faced in the process of running schools in a timely mannerHopefully, tooThe organizers of private schools further correct the idea of running schools, fully implement the party's education policy, fully implement the fundamental task of establishing morality and cultivating people, uphold the attributes of public welfare, run schools in accordance with the law, standardize and integrity, constantly optimize the positioning of running schools, constantly condense teaching characteristics, continuously improve the quality of education, tell the Chinese story of private education, strive to run an education that satisfies the people, and make new contributions to promoting the modernization of Chinese-style education and building a strong country in educationThe China Association for the Promotion of Democracy will continue to pay attention to supporting private education and contribute to the healthy development of China's education.
Thank you!Editor: Yan Jiayu Reviewer: Hou Jian.
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The 13th China Conference on the Development of Private Education was held in Beijing