China’s education revolution, which has seen an explosion in the number of university entrants, could be stalled by “bottlenecks” in the supply of talented students, a meeting of leading Asian university heads has heard. Xu Jialu, director of the College of Chinese Language and Culture at Beijing Normal University, told a meeting of university presidents in Hong Kong that China had achieved great success over the past 30 years. “Our overall economic output, which is fundamental to social advancement, is already ranked third in the world,” he said. However, to sustain this extraordinary economic growth China must nurture “huge” additional numbers of creative and talented people, who “will not spontaneously appear,” warned Prof. Xu.

In an address titled ‘From Bottleneck to a Broad Avenue: Preparation and Development of Chinese Teachers in the New Century’, he said: “In a world of rapid developments in science and technology, individual creativity is critical. Schools are the backbones for inheriting, promoting and developing human civilisation. In Chinese education, the development of a creative mindset and abilities among students is urgently needed. However, the system... is not suited to this goal.”

Prof. Xu, who is a former vice-chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, was speaking at the inaugural Asian Round Table of Presidents of Universities of Education, hosted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education recently. There are more than 11 million teachers in China, helping to produce about 7 million high school graduates each year, and 1.8 million annual entrants into tertiary education. University enrolments have reportedly risen from 10 percent of young people in 1999 to more than 20 percent today.

There are some 182 ‘normal’ universities in China — institutions focused primarily on teacher education — which enrol about 600,000 students every year. Nevertheless, Prof. Xu suggested this may not be enough, adding that it is common for secondary schools to have too many students in each class. He says that despite heavy investment in education, “in many ways, the education system in China has not been able to satisfy the needs of the Chinese people, such as providing enough places in universities”.

In light of this, he urged the Chinese government to make further commitments and to continue to expand the scale of its education institutions between now and 2020.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)