Abstract

Private schools account for a big percentage in Shenzhen. In the past decade, private schools were developing fast. They are helping the government provide a big number of admission quotas for the school-age students. Private schools have made great contributions to the education industry in Shenzhen. With the development of economy and further development of urban renewal projects, more and more new public schools are being built, because for each urban renewal project, a new nine-year school should be built according to the urban renewal plan. With the growing number of public schools, private schools are facing big challenges.

In recent years, Shenzhen has issued many relevant policies to accelerate the development of private schools but private schools are still facing big challenges. There should be gaps between what the government departments have provided and what the private school really needs. This study first reviewed the current policy related to Shenzhen private education to find out how the policies affect the development of private schools. And then figured out the gap between the current situation and the private school sponsors’ expectation. Then, a questionnaire survey was carried out among the teachers of private schools. A total of 416 responses were received, with participants spread across 11 sub-districts in Longgang District, Shenzhen. Stage three involved three rounds of individual interviews with 12 participants which including private school investors, principals and government officers. This study was designed as a qualitative multi method research and used the theory of Centralisation or Decentralisation, Marketisation or Government Regulations and Stakeholder Theory to analyse the data, after analysing the data, this study found that not only the government should provide more powerful policy support, more importantly, private schools themselves should actively adjust, the school boards should increase investment to improve school conditions and provide high salaries to attract and retain excellent teachers, because only high-quality and characteristic private schools can survive in the fierce market competition.

Biography of speaker

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