An Empirical Study On The Demand For Compulsory Education Of Rural Households

It is of great significance to make certain the demand for education of rural households in the context of the implementation of the policy of the layout adjustment of rural schools, which will become an important indicator for the assessment of the policy and further to become an important force to influence government educational decision-making. This paper empirically analyses the demand for education of rural household, with the data from a questionnaire survey covering 10 provinces and the case from rural education field, using mixed research methods, employing the demand theory and family education decision theory from economics.This paper has designed five parts, eight chapters, as follows:The first part is the introduction of the paper, including chapter 1. First of all, it introduces the reasons why to choose the demand for compulsory education of rural households as the doctoral dissertation topic from three aspects:the practical problems of the development of the rural compulsory education, the theoretical debate on solving the problem of supply and demand of rural compulsory education and the personal interest. In the second, it clearly determines the main objective of the paper, outlines the theoretical significance and practical value of the study. At last, the core concepts of this article are defined.The second part is literature review, which is the main content of chapter 2. Firstly, it briefly combs and reviews the literature on the layout adjustment of rural schools, which highlights the significance of the demand for education in the context of the implementation of the policy of school layout adjustment. Secondly, it combs the literature on the demand for rural compulsory education of rural families. At last, it establishes the theoretical framework of this study basing on elaborating the demand theory and family education decision theory.The third part is the research design, which consists of chapter 3. Firstly, it transits from research interest to research problems, focusing on four aspects:urban and rural demand, educational quality demand, accommodations demand and small schools demand. Secondly, it illustrates the reasons and the use of the process of mixed methods and introduces the main source of data and the process of sample choosing. Thirdly, it describes the basic characteristics of the sample and briefly states the research logical train and structure arrangement. At last, it objectively puts forward the limitations of the study.The fourth part is the empirical research on the demand for compulsory education of rural family, including chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6 and chapter 7. This part is the main portion of the paper. Chapter 4 is the demand for urban and rural education of rural family. We have found that, nearly 80% of rural households want their children to study in county and town schools and educational urbanization becomes the dominant demand of rural households. But it can not be ignored is that there are still 22.2% of rural households who choose rural schools for their kids. The regression analysis found that there are many factors significantly affect the demand for urban and rural education of rural households:the grades of children, the actual position of the school where the children at, the jobs of parents, the total income of family, the parents who are migrant workers, the quality of the school which the children attend, the desiring for better education, the parents’attitude towards concentrating schools in counties and towns, the demand for their children boarding in school, the region, the environment and the policy of layout adjustment of schools.The fifth chapter is the quality demand for compulsory education of rural family. We have found that 96.6% of rural households have strong appetite for their children to accept better education; the regression analysis found that only two variables significantly affect the quality demand for compulsory education of the rural family:the quality of school which the children are at and the desires of their children boarding in school.The sixth chapter is the accommodation demand for children of rural families. The results are: 25.6% of rural households want their kids to board in school; Many variables significantly affect the accommodation demand of rural families:the total income of family, the distance between home and school, the wish for their children studying in county and town schools, the attitude of parents toward establishing boarding school, the region and the environment.Chapter 7 is the demand for small schools of rural households. We have found that the subjects of small school demand are disadvantage families in rural area; some rural families are showing strong demand for small schools in three different states:at the removal, after the removal and the retention of small schools. The demand for small schools of rural households is not a low quality demand but a basic demand to be valued.The fifth part are the conclusions and policy recommendations, mainly constituting the content of chapter 8. On the basis of the summary above, the paper focuses on rural compulsory education improvement for supply from the demand for education of rural family. The overall design is that we should attach great importance to the education demand of rural households;on the concrete policies, we should properly handle the relationship between urbanization and rural school development, considering the development of schools in towns as the important channel to solve the problem of rural education, and focus on the development of rural school, so that schools in the county, township and village will be reasonably distributed; we should ensure the development of rural boarding schools:strengthening the new personnel configuration of boarding schools, increasing investment, strengthening the construction of the standardization of boarding schools, improving internal management in boarding schools, etc. We should attach great importance to the development of rural small school as to ensure small school demands of rural households:classifying rural small schools into different types, focusing on the project of "rural small school development", implementing "the integration of primary school and kindergarten ", making some adjustment methods to keep small schools stable and dynamic.