Financial reform of basic education in China

Since the early 1980s, the financing of basic education in China has moved rapidly away from a centralized system with a narrow revenue base to a decentralized system with a diversified revenue base. This paper provides a critical assessment of the impacts of the financial reform of basic education in China, focusing on issues of structure, resource mobilization, inequality, and inefficiency. Tt concludes that while the reform has been successful in achieving the objectives of structural change and mobilization of additional government and non-government resources, the current system is marked by notable weaknesses in terms of glaring inequalities and significant inefficiencies. Further improvements of the financing system require interventions both inside and outside the education sector. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd