Formal And Informal Structures In Teacher Policy
The formal bureaucratic home of educational policy, the State Education Commission, is itself an acknowledgment of the weakness of the education bureaucracy. Initially, the Ministry of Education (MOE) headed up the education sector. The MOE was functionally on a par with other ministries in competition to obtain scarce financial resources and official attention. But, as the then head of the SEdC, Li Peng, explained, this arrangement made it "very difficult for the Ministry of Education to map out an overall plan for education as a whole" (FBIS , 14 June 1985, K7).
The weakness of the MOE's position often undermined efforts regarding teachers. One MOE official I interviewed in 1983, for example, described how the MOE by itself could not solve the problems of the teaching profession. Instead, the ministry had to rely on the State Council, but had to compete with advocates of other sectors for State Council support, attention, and action. While he believed that central leaders like the then premier, Zhao Ziyang, understood the problem, the official said it would take much persuasion before teachers' situations could be improved. "Those of us doing education push education. ... But other ministries have their problems as well."
The creation of the SEdC in 1985 was intended to address directly this problem of cross-ministry competition for money and attention. The goal was to improve the education system's persuasive position. Appointing members to sit concurrently on the SEdC and other ministries or commissions was to facilitate coordination across ministries and simplify structural arrangements. In addition, naming someone with the stature of Li Peng as head was to lend credibility (and symbolic clout) to the claims about the importance of education.
Yet although these structural changes, designed to reduce fragmenta-
tion, have occurred, interviews with officials in 1986 and 1987 suggest that education bureaucrats still must work regularly with other ministries, at times competing with them for attention and support. The presence of the concurrent members on the SEdC leadership group may have facilitated cross-ministry and cross-commission communication, yet it has not obviated the need to persuade policymakers outside the SEdC to cast their lot with education (as the second case study illustrates). Senior SEdC officials say that they still have to call on superiors to intervene in cross-sector bargaining. Though the SEdC may have more clout through its organizational structure than its predecessors, it must nevertheless negotiate with other bureaucracies.
Though the SEdC's role overlaps with other ministries, commissions, and the State Council, I focus chiefly on the SEdC organization and its role. It is the SEdC that bears the responsibility for studying and articulating major educational concerns, preparing guidelines for schools, overseeing the administration of much of higher education and—at a distance—the direction of precollegiate schooling, and the organizing of educational reform.[4]
The Formal Organization: A Horizontal View
The education sector, as formally represented in the central government by the SEdC, is connected to its organizational environment. That is, it is organized to include representation from other ministries and commissions whose work affects the education system. In 1987 the SEdC was headed by a leadership group consisting of its head (then Li Peng, and since 1988 Li Tieying), eight vice-ministers, a former vice-minister of education, and vice-ministers from the State Planning Commission (SPC), the State Economic Commission (SEC), the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labor and Personnel, and the State Science and Technology Commission.
The SEdC is composed of some thirty-five departments and bureaus (si and ju ), with various offices (chu, shi ), and, below them, sections (ke ). Policy issues often cut across several departments or bureaus in the SEdC. An issue area is typically the responsibility of a vice-minister; in the case of teachers, Liu Bin was responsible in 1988. (He also was responsible for precollegiate education and minority education.) He oversaw the extensive cross-department work that is required for teacher-related policies. The majority of teacher-related work comes
under the authority of the Teacher Education Department (shifansi ), which is responsible for tertiary-level teacher-education institutions (that is, normal colleges and universities), their secondary equivalents (teacher-training schools), in-service training of teachers, and teaching materials. Teachers' work conditions are the concern of the Precollegiate Education Department. While these two departments shoulder the chief responsibility for teachers, some aspects of teacher-related policy come under the purview of other SEdC departments: the Political and Ideological Education Department, for example, and the bureaus of Capital Construction and of Planning and Financial Affairs.
At the same time, the policy process in education is not restricted to the SEdC. Teacher-related policies require contact and cooperation with other ministries. One SEdC official in 1987 explained that the SEdC necessarily has "closer relations" with the Ministry of Finance (for funding issues), the Ministry of Labor (for policy on personnel and salaries), and the SPC, the SEC, and the State Science and Technology Commission (SSTC). The presence on the SEdC of vice-ministers from these sectors is an acknowledgment of the interdependence among tasks.
The Vertical View
The formal description of the education system's bureaucratic actors portrays the focus of policy activity as being at the SEdC, albeit with active collaboration with or coordination of other ministries and commissions. But the educational policy process also involves much vertical movement. The State Council needs to approve major policy and, at times, mediate disagreements between participants. Provinces, counties, municipalities, and individual schools also are centrally involved. And there is substantial autonomy at the lower levels.
What is the relative power of these different levels within the educational system? Most generally, the central-government level (SEdC) is seen as having the greatest power, though provincial and local levels also have responsibilities that give them power over schools. It is the SEdC that determines broad policies, provides the outline for curriculum in precollegiate education, determines texts, and, to a large extent, runs higher education (through its control of the university entrance-examination system and the determination of academic majors). Provincial education authorities run the secondary education system (through their control of the secondary school entrance exams), provide some financing of precollegiate education, and control some aspects of the nonkey sector of higher education (its financing, student recruitment, and, in part, job assignments). Local governments provide the majority of funds for local elementary and secondary schools.
It should be noted also that the power of different levels of the education bureaucracy is complex because of overlap in the function of central, provincial, and local levels; regional variation; range in types of policy and kinds of resources that connote power; and the distinction between state-run and community-run (minban ) schools. Power over funding, for example, depends on the level and type of school (e.g., key or nonkey). Power over the curriculum is also somewhat influenced by more than one level and varies by place: though in the 1980s the SEdC controlled a nationally unified curriculum, provinces and localities had the authority to supplement that curriculum (and varied greatly in the degree to which they did so). In the late 1980s Shanghai used its own experimental curriculum in place of the national curriculum. Finally, depending on the type of education policy (e.g., curriculum, funding, administrative structure), even individual schools can exert a kind of veto power in their ability to obstruct, delay, or reinterpret policy.
In short, the pattern of power within the education system is complex. The pattern has also changed. Over the 1980s there occurred nationally an increase in the relative strength, autonomy, and influence of the local bureaucratic level and individual school units as greater responsibility for finance devolved to local levels and schools were encouraged to rely on entrepreneurial solutions to many operational problems. At the same time, in policies regarding the admissions systems, bureaucratic structures, rules, and standards of evaluation, educational reforms have tied schools more closely to unified plans or central authority. The result of this two-sided change is the increased autonomy of lower levels of the educational system within a more circumscribed boundary of action.
With respect to teacher policy, the patterns of fragmented power parallel those described above for education generally. Formally, the departments responsible for teachers at the central level (in the SEdC) have provincial counterparts in the Bureau of Education (BOE).[5] These provincial offices have power over teacher policy through provincial administration of teacher education,[6] through direct administration of provincially run secondary schools, and indirectly through the oversight of county and district education offices, where the bulk of elementary and secondary schooling is administered. Provinces, like the counties and
districts below them, play a noticeable role in interpreting and in effect shaping educational policy.
In this structure there is much delegation of discretionary authority. The Center decides that teacher competence must be assured, but municipalities choose the subjects in which to test their elementary teachers (ZGJYB , 10 November 1987, 1). The central government announces a 10 percent wage increase for teachers, but provinces and localities are authorized to find the money and make decisions about the actual allocations (ZGJYB , 3 December 1987, 1). And the former Ministry of Education announced that teacher education would be upgraded, but local institutions had to decide what that meant in curricular terms (Paine 1986).
Nonetheless, stopping with the observation that there is delegation of discretionary authority assigns too much rationality, foresight, and decisive clarity to the central education bureaucracy. Instead, closer examination of the process of educational policy formation suggests less rationality, more interaction, and iteration. Horizontal and vertical interactions produce a process and a set of policies that are at one time more responsive, vaguer, more heterogeneous, and slower than the delegation or discretion model suggests.
Two cases of policy formation—one regarding a regulatory issue, the other distributive in character, are analyzed below. While each illustrates the profoundly interactive nature of the process, the two differ in the locus of and approaches to authority and influence. The first concerns regulations for teacher competence. Through this case we see the grouping process, the powerful role of subordinates, and the variety of coping strategies invoked. The second case concerns efforts to improve the social, economic, and political situation of teachers. Here we observe the limits of the education sector and the subsequent need for cross-sector alliances and cooperation.