Education Status of China

1717 S Dorsey Ln Apt 2056, Tempe AZ 85281

April 4, 2016
Office of the Secretary-Generals Envoy on Youth
866 United Nations Plaza, A-300
New York, NY 10017
Dear Officer of UN committee,
My name is Yuerong Sun, I am a college student at Arizona state University, and I am
writing this paper to report how well China is doing at meeting the UN Global Education
Initiative priorities. I hope my collection of data can help you knows more about China and
where we are at, including what we already mastered and what we still lack of.
As I am doing the research, I find out that the three priority UN Global Education
Initiative are: first: put every child in school, second: Improve the quality of learning, Third:
Foster Global Citizenship. I will mention each of the priority below in details.
When evaluating Chinas education and the progress of putting every child in school,
what I want to focus is to get detail information about the enrollment population and rate when
children first start their school. From the data I collected from the World Bank, Enrollment in
Grade 1 of primary education in both sexes increased from 16.7 million in 2010 to 17.3 million
in 2013. That means China enrollment population is increasing. Moreover, the Enrolment in
upper secondary education in both sexes Is also increasing from 44.7 million in 2010 to 45.9
million in 2015.
Illiterate population and gender differences can also be a good point of view to look at the
education status in China. From the data collected from the World Bank, The Adult illiterate

population for people 15 years or older in both sex is decreasing from 53.9 million in 2011 to
41.6 million in 2015, which is a good sign of having a lower illiterate rate in the future.
However, Female illiterate population (30.8million in 2015) is still higher than
male(10.8million). China need to realize the problem and try to provide equal education
opportunity to both gender.
When looking at the goal of Improve the quality of learning, I think China still have a
long way to go. The challenge to improve the quality education may be the shortage of qualifies
teachers. The shortage of teachers can be influenced by low salary and high working hours.

This chart is showing a compression of salary, satisfaction, aggravation, comfort, hours

between ESL teachers in different country (CTFU,2014). In the chart, you can see that Chinese
teacher has the lowest salary and highest working hours.
China is also facing a challenge to Foster Global Citizenship. The problem may be exambased education. Acceptance to an institution of higher education in China is highly competitive
and only accessible to students that earn the highest gaokao scores (Foreign Credit, 2010). The
exam-based education can create a lot of stress to students and may not provide fare and equal
opportunity for every student.

The picture above is showing a real life when students are preparing for GaoKao. The test
is intense and need more than one year to prepare (Ybanez, 2015).

Citation
CFTU. (2014, January 19). China Foreign Teachers Union: China Foreign Teacher Salaries/Pay
Almost Lowest in The World. Retrieved April 6, 2016, from
http://www.chinaforeignteachersunion.org/

ForeignCredit. (2010, January 18). The Cost of College in China. Retrieved April 6, 2016, from
https://www.classbase.com/News/The-Cost-of-College-in-China-60

Ybanez, A. (2015, June 26). A group of Chinese students reviewing for the national college
entrance exams or gaokao. [Photograph]. Retrieved from
http://en.yibada.com/articles/41077/20150626/italy-france-now-accept-gaokaoscores.htm