The Importance of Schools for Children from China and Wales - Coursework Example

Education: Purposes and Values

ASSIGNMENT

Assignment Title: The role of schools for children who are living in poverty

— In China and Wales

1.0 Introduction

According to Filmer, 2000, most developing countries are associated with poverty, which results in low educational attainment and widened gender gaps in education. In most instances, these countries are associated with low incomes and wealth, making it difficult to finance educational investments even in the cases where its returns exceed the costs incurred. In addition to these findings, it is also speculated that parents with low education levels are less likely to educate their children. Additionally, a lack of community resources in such poor areas leads to poor quality schools, which may discourage enrollment and reduce the returns to education.

In contemporary society, education has become an important factor in determining national competitiveness and a key factor in determining human development and people's quality of life. Education is everyone's preparation for life; it is the foundation to go to the future, to share the knowledge accumulated by predecessors. Or the individual student, the education level can also determine the future job and salary. It can help the students to solve poverty with their knowledge.

This article will state the relation between school education and poverty in China and Wales, from four perspectives: the definition of disadvantage from scholarly books or articles. Secondly, the current situation of poverty in China and Wales. Thirdly, the effectiveness of relevant policies, fourthly, how schools can improve children's living in poverty.

2.0 The definition of disadvantaged Education.

Educational disadvantage refers to the fact that some children benefit less from the education system than their peers. The educational disadvantage can be caused by many different reasons: poverty, disability, special needs, race, religion, gender, region, social status, and so on. Educational disadvantage presents itself in many ways; the most common one is the low level of participation and achievement in the formal education system.

There is a confusing variety of terms used as descriptors of disadvantage, such as deprivation inequality, at-risk, and, most recently, social exclusion. As Kellaghan et al. (2001) point out, such terms are often used as if they were equivalent in meaning. This interchangeability may reflect the fact that educational disadvantage is a complex phenomenon resulting from the interaction of deep-seated economic, social, and educational factors." (Theo Cox,2000)

The Education Act describes educational disadvantage as "Social or economic disadvantage impedes the educational process and prevents students from obtaining the equal opportunity and benefits from education in their schools." Educational disadvantage applies to the condition where some people gain less value than their peers from the education system. The educational disadvantage is reflected in many ways, generally the lower level of participation in school or social life and the lower level of achievement. Or because of poverty, disability, dyslexia, poor health, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, etc. (Agasisti, T., & Longobardi, S,2017), Every person should have the right to receive an education. They are the people that the government should give essential help to solve the education disadvantage.

2.1 Educational poverty in China

According to education statistics released by Gov.cn, the total number of educational poverties in China is about 460 million, including 219.82 million in primary school, 130.78 million in secondary school, 80.62 million in high school and 31.24 million in higher education. There is a gap between the performance of poor children in school and those with good conditions. The poor educational group is mainly composed of two parts: one is the poor students in the school; Another is school-age teenagers who are out of school because of financial hardship. (Xu, 2017)

Educational poverty in China is very serious, especially in primary education. Increasing the enrollment rate is the first step. The central committee and The China youth development foundation has launched a public welfare project named "project hope" since 1998. The main purpose of the project is to help children who can't go to school because of poverty and raise money to help them. Over the past three decades, from 1989 to 2019, project hope has helped thousands of poor children achieve their dreams of going to school, and many have grown up to be the best in society.

As of September 2019, Project Hope had received 15.2 billion. Chinese yuan in donations. A total of 20,195 new primary schools were established. And helped nearly six million students who were struggling financially. Chinese president Xi Jinping said, “speaking highly of the program’s important role in assisting poverty relief, boosting education, helping youth growth and forming social ethos.” This year marks the 30th anniversary of project hope, and President Xi Jinping has extended his high approval and warm congratulations to the project. (Hua, 2019)

The gross enrollment rate for preprimary education became better than presently, due to the project. More children who are living with poverty received a good preschool education than before.

It is a great cause to strive for equality in education as far as possible. Supporting children from poor families and reducing the dropout rate of rural children. Project hope has achieved thousands of outstanding talents and fulfilled the college dreams of many poor children.

It also plays an important role in social stability. As a result of supporting the children of poor families, the dropout rate of rural children has been reduced, and rural migrant workers have been greatly reduced also.

At present, the project hope can no longer solve the problem fundamentally by simply subsidizing money. It needs to go deep into reality, understand the real reasons why rural children are difficult to go to school, and then take the right way to solve the problem.

2.2 Use of the internet to help children living in poverty

The government department of education released the implementation plan for improving the development of online education. This plan aims to support and encourage poor and remote areas to use high-quality online education resources and promote equitable and balanced development of education. It can speed up the pairing of high-quality schools in counties and small schools in rural areas, establish a number of online education communities for joint schools, make joint curriculum arrangements, overall teaching arrangements, and synchronize the sharing of teaching resources. For some developing areas, the government strives to solve the problems of incomplete courses and inadequate teachers in poor areas. (Zhang, 2019)

Despite the great efforts made by schools and the central governments, children from poor areas still score below the national average on the human development index. The educational imbalance between the more prosperous coastal provinces and the more remote western regions, as well as between rural and urban areas, still remain. (Chen, 2008). Numerous challenges exist in achieving equal care and access to quality and equitable education for every disadvantaged child.

2.3 Measures to help children living in poverty

China offers an informative case study of how local community resources can condition educational inequality, especially poverty. Education opportunities can significantly be conditioned by the aspects of the community. For example, data from the Demographic and Health Surveys suggest that the presence of primary schools in the rural China villages have contributed to the enrolment of many poor children into schools. Also, education decentralization back in the 1980s and early 1990s have tightened the link between the resources targeted to schools and local economic circumstances. Government provision of financial transfers to poor areas has also increased the responsibility of financing education.

Considering a shortage of teachers in the poor areas, and rural teaching quality is poorer. It is a must to strengthen the teaching team construction in the countryside, and to strengthen the construction of school facilities reach the same level and the city also let the children who are living in poverty to enjoy the same good learning environment and conditions, adequate teaching equipment, learning materials, good accommodation, dining facilities and so on.

The more high-achieving schools help rural schools, such as having excellent teachers and principals, to help expand the distribution of high-quality educational resources in poor areas so that children living in poor conditions can also enjoy good educational conditions and learn the same knowledge.

Information technology can be used to help, such as free online classes, where teachers can teach poor children online to propagate quality teaching resources from urban schools to poor students. To provide free one-on-one instruction at home to disabled or disadvantaged children to increase their chances of success. Integrating these kids into regular classrooms and experiencing a good learning atmosphere.

2.4 Educational poverty in Wales

Wales has about 600, 000 children, and 200, 000 children in poverty, or a third, on a household income of 60 percent or less of the median income (Pollock,2019). Ninety thousand people live in severe poverty, with household incomes of 50 percent or less of median income. Fifty-three percent of poor children worry that their parents cannot afford daily necessities like food, clothes, and heat. In Wales, 25 percent of low-income parents always skip meals because they feel there is nothing to cut back on. Many Welsh parents said the economic pressure was affecting their relationship with their children, while also affecting their children's academic performance, the rising cost of basic living, changes to the welfare system, and cuts in public spending are all set to take the position after a few years. (Chamberlain and Mullineux,2019)

The FSM stands for free school meals. In Wales, the number of children in poverty is calculated by the proportion of people receiving free school meals (FSM). In wales, the proportion is 17 percent. The huge disadvantage of living in poverty has had a big influence on education standards in Wales. The performance of children who live in poverty compared with children come from good backgrounds; it is obvious that poverty has a great influence on children's attainment and achievement.

Over the past two years, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has conducted a number of timely studies on educational outcomes for disadvantaged children. These measures include preschool programs, increased student initiative and motivation, increased extracurricular activities, improved student behavior, reduced absenteeism, and many other measures, aimed at improving the well-being of children living in disadvantaged conditions. (Egan, 2016)

Many successful schools frequently address poverty and disadvantage in their policies and documents. They have specific and achievable goals to help disadvantaged learners. Improve the achievement of disadvantaged students. They are targeted at the particular needs of the disadvantaged learners in their schools. The schools usually have a motto or mission statement that they use to unite staff, learners, parents, and governors in view of the school that addresses issues of disadvantage positively. These schools have performance management arrangements where individual employee performance reflects how well they are doing to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. And review the progress made towards the goal of eradicating poverty and disadvantage.

In the 2011 report, we found that most schools do not provide support specifically for disadvantaged learners, and only a few have such effective mechanisms. In general, schools are better at identifying and supporting underperforming learners, whether or not they are disadvantaged. The survey found that many successful primary schools stressed the importance of getting information about disadvantaged children as early as possible, preferably before formal education begins. Some schools make home visits to poor families before their children enter school. This means they want to be as accommodating as possible to their children's specific needs.

Most schools have effective systems to track learner progress. But it’s easy to find that they did not use their tracking system well enough to focus on the specific needs of disadvantaged learners, such as the lack of self-esteem and ambition of some children, psychological needs, or to see how the children were progressing.

Some successful schools have powerful special systems to gather information about poor students, and they have outside agencies to help them learn more about their children's needs. Here is some advice to help children in poverty， for example: Use data to track learners' progress, Improve the literacy and learning skills of children in poor conditions, rove attendance and daily performance, increase extracurricular activities, listen to children's needs and give them constant encouragement and help them to build strong confidence.

2.5 Welsh Government Policy

Given the high levels of poverty and child poverty that are being faced in Wales, the Welsh Government is strongly committed to reducing the extent of poverty and its impacts on the children and families (Parekh & Kenway, 2011). As of date, it has developed an action plan branded as "Tackling Poverty Action Plan" (Welsh Government, 2012), and this action plan outlines the possible ways the government tends to assist the people currently facing in poverty; prevent future poverty and mitigate its effects in the country.

In the year 2011, a Pupil Deprivation Plan was introduced, with the aim to provide per-head funding for each child over five years who receive free meals at schools to encourage their education. This plan is targeted to run for more years and provide the needed opportunity to support schools in their attempts to introduce additional interventions to aid in lifting the achievement of disadvantaged children. The government also provides guidance for schools on how best to use this grant. The main focus of this action plan is to strategize on reducing the impacts on educational achievement. The first strategy can be described as learning- and teaching- focused, while the second as a student-, family-and community-focused.

In the first strategy, (Learning- and teaching- focused ), policies here are designed to improve the quality of teaching and leadership, since these are the topmost influences on student achievement in all schools, such as those schools with high numbers of FSM students. As presented by Egan, 2012, such policies draw upon a large body of research and practices that may lead to student's improvements in classrooms as well as making schools highly effective. They also present effective methods of learning and teaching, which may help improve the outcomes of disadvantaged children. In Wales, there have been increasing efforts to develop the involvement and engagement of parents and families in their children's education (Egan, 2012).

• • The policy about the application for a student grant in Wales

Children receiving free school meals may apply for a subsidy if they are: entering reception class, third grade, seventh or tenth grade, pupils aged four, seven, eleven or fourteen in special schools.

Taking into account the increased cost of learning from the start of secondary school. The government gives the grant to seven-year-old students. Funding for looked-after children is available in every school year. While education can break the cycle of poverty affecting education, it can also strengthen it. In many countries, there are a lot of undereducated people who are born poor. Although education can break this unfavorable intergenerational cycle, it also can, on the other hand, reinforce it. For example, “If education policy is not designed with egalitarian notions in mind. This is one of the reasons why the ability of education to operate as a mechanism with the potential to offset social disadvantage is important”.( Machin, 2006)

The Welsh government says it will halve the 1997 level of child poverty by 2010, and child poverty will be eliminated by 2020. To achieve the goal of eradicating child income poverty, the welsh assembly government will:

1. Provide employment assistance to parents of poor children, and increase their employment and income through the DWP work benefits program or by promoting their active work initiative.

2. Encourage employers to participate in local employer co-operation schemes

3. In the public sector, promote high-quality employment, mainly family-friendly jobs with good pay.

4. Special skills and qualities of individuals need to be improved in consideration of parents with special needs.

5. Improve child care services, for school-aged children and children under five, and strengthen support for those people who wish to work as caretakers. (Winckler,2009)

3.0 Conclusion

China's education problem lies in the imbalance of resources. In some big cities, educational resources are too concentrated; In some relatively remote areas, resources are too scarce. The problem of education, in essence, is a problem of social equity, which is not only a starting point of equity but also a process of equity. Targeted policies for poor children, such as project hope, have made great progress in recent years, but there are still many poor children who do not receive the same resources as their better-off counterparts.

In wales, the proportion of children receiving free school meals represents the number of children in poverty, which is higher in wales. Many schools in wales have measures in place to help children and have had significant results. But the problem is still not completely solved. This is a long-term problem that requires constant effort. Further, development of work on how education can contribute to reducing the impact of poverty on educational achievement, and this means that the education system in Wales should combine the learning- and teaching- focused and students-, family- and community-focused policies. In the future, policies to be used should be pre-trialed and evaluated rigorously before they are implemented or decided upon. This scaling should be based upon the impact on improved educational achievement by poorer children.

The common problem in both countries is the unbalanced educational development of the remote area. The government should take all the recommendations into practice. Education poverty should be solved as soon as possible. For those developing areas in the country, the government should not only give financial help but also give the information helpful. So that education poverty will be eliminated in the future.

2.1 Educational poverty in China

According to education statistics released by Gov.cn, the total number of educational poverties in China is about 460 million, including 219.82 million in primary school, 130.78 million in secondary school, 80.62 million in high school and 31.24 million in higher education. There is a gap between the performance of poor children in school and those with good conditions. The poor educational group is mainly composed of two parts: one is the poor students in the school; Another is school-age teenagers who are out of school because of financial hardship. (Xu, 2017)

Educational poverty in China is very serious, especially in primary education. Increasing the enrollment rate is the first step. The central committee and The China youth development foundation has launched a public welfare project named "project hope" since 1998. The main purpose of the project is to help children who can't go to school because of poverty and raise money to help them. Over the past three decades, from 1989 to 2019, project hope has helped thousands of poor children achieve their dreams of going to school, and many have grown up to be the best in society.

As of September 2019, Project Hope had received 15.2 billion. Chinese yuan in donations. A total of 20,195 new primary schools were established. And helped nearly six million students who were struggling financially. Chinese president Xi Jinping said, “speaking highly of the program’s important role in assisting poverty relief, boosting education, helping youth growth and forming social ethos.” This year marks the 30th anniversary of project hope, and President Xi Jinping has extended his high approval and warm congratulations to the project. (Hua, 2019)

The gross enrollment rate for preprimary education became better than presently, due to the project. More children who are living with poverty received a good preschool education than before.

It is a great cause to strive for equality in education as far as possible. Supporting children from poor families and reducing the dropout rate of rural children. Project hope has achieved thousands of outstanding talents and fulfilled the college dreams of many poor children.

It also plays an important role in social stability. As a result of supporting the children of poor families, the dropout rate of rural children has been reduced, and rural migrant workers have been greatly reduced also.

At present, the project hope can no longer solve the problem fundamentally by simply subsidizing money. It needs to go deep into reality, understand the real reasons why rural children are difficult to go to school, and then take the right way to solve the problem.

2.2 Use of the internet to help children living in poverty

The government department of education released the implementation plan for improving the development of online education. This plan aims to support and encourage poor and remote areas to use high-quality online education resources and promote equitable and balanced development of education. It can speed up the pairing of high-quality schools in counties and small schools in rural areas, establish a number of online education communities for joint schools, make joint curriculum arrangements, overall teaching arrangements, and synchronize the sharing of teaching resources. Read More