Centralization and Decentralization: Educational Reforms and Changing Governance in Chinese Societies

November 20, 2013

Return to CERC Studies in Comparative Education.

Edited by: Mok Ka-Ho

2003, 230pp.

ISBN 10: 962-8093-58-4
ISBN 13: 978-962-8093-58-8

HK$200 (local), US$32 (overseas)

Published by Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) and Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Globalization has brought dramatic changes to the character and functions of education in most countries around the world. However, the impact of globalization on schools and universities is not uniform. One public-policy strategy that has been widely adopted is decentralization; but there is no consensus on whether centralization or decentralization is more effective to improve organization and management in education.

This book is contextualized in the literature on globalization, and examines how policies of decentralization have affected the running of education in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, Singapore, Macau and Mainland China. It analyzes the strategies that the governments of the selected societies have adopted in reforming the structure of education system, mobilizing different forces to create more educational opportunities and devising new measures to assure quality in the education sector.

Mok Ka-Ho is Associate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. He has written extensively in the domains of public policy and comparative education.

Educational Reforms in Russia and China at the Turn of the 21st Century

September 2, 2013

Return to the CERC Monograph Series.

Nina Ye Borevskaya, V.P. Borisenkov, Xiaoman ZHU

2010, 115 pp.

ISBN 978-988-17852-5-1; 978-988-17852-4-4.

Published by Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) in collaboration with the UNESCO

HK$100 (local), US$16 (overseas)

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“This important study of educational reform in Russia and China brings to the global research community in comparative education a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the parallel yet divergent educational policies and developments in the two societies over the past 25 years. The intent of the study is both academic and ameliorative scholars from both countries who contributed to the volume are interested in what can be learned from the experiences of the other, and in understanding more generally the common and divergent patterns of educational transition. Striking comparisons between the two societies come up in the dialogues on many related themes. Differences between the “shock therapy” approach to political change in Russia and the gradual change of the Chinese communist system, and their respective educational implications, constitute a central feature of the analysis in this volume.

Borevskaya’s carefully argued summary knits together many of the broad arguments that run through the volume as a whole, while at the same time bringing in nuances and questions that reveal an extraordinary grasp of historical context in the tensions she identifies among three core models in both societies: “an outdated purely state model, a market oriented educational model, and a culture oriented educational model which is congruent with the Chinese and Russian educational traditions, as well as with global tendencies toward humanization.”

Ruth Hayhoe, Comparative Education Review