From the 18th to the 23rd of August of 2014, MOE Research & Training Centre for Community Education held the second “Lifelong Learning Lawmaking and Legal System Research Senior Training Class” at Lanzhou city of Gansu Province. The class aimed to promote progress in nationwide legislation related to lifelong education, encouraging more cities to join in establishing their own programmes of lifelong education as soon as possible, so as to provide practical legal protection for the lifelong learning of citizens in our country, and to promote the development of lifelong education.
The class included the Vice Chairman and the Secretary General of the Chinese College Continuing Education Society, Tsinghua University Professor Yan Jichang, as well as Professor Xu Liyi, Doctor of Public Administration as well as Director of Learning Guidance Centre of the Open University of Taiwan. Professor Sheng Guanghui, Vice President of Fujian RTVU, Professor Huang Dongsheng of Taiyuan RTVU, and Professor Zheng Xinjian of Hebei RTVU introduced the current situation, significance, and current implementation of lifelong education lawmaking in four places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. They also carried out comparative analysis of key problems facing lifelong education lawmaking.
Professor Yan Jichang mentioned in his speech “Construction of Lifelong Education System and Higher Education Continuing Education” that there was no managerial institution for lifelong education at the national level, nor “Lifelong Learning Law”. Relative institutions and regulations have so far only been set up at the city or provincial level. In 2013 the proposal “Speeding Up the Progress of Creating Lifelong Education Legislation” was accepted by the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Ministry of Education also gave its written response to the proposal and drafted an initial report for “Lifelong Learning Legislation”, dividing the main content into five sections including general rules, the setup conditions and duties of education service institutions, certifications and management system for lifelong education employees, practical government oversight strategies, and legal liabilities. These developments revealed the importance and urgency of creating national lifelong education legislation.
Professor Xu Liyi lectured on the purpose, content, and progress of lifelong learning legislation in Taiwan and introduced the general features of the lifelong learning system in Taiwan from such aspects as lifelong learning institutions, managerial institutions at all levels, community universities, informal and formal education, happy age learning, lifelong learning professional personnel, multiple learning channels, and learning organizations.
Professor Huang Dongsheng illustrated the progress of formulating the “Taiyuan Lifelong Education Promoting Regulations” and highlighted five highlights of the regulations, including innovation, locality, practicality, sustainability, and adoptability. Centring on strictly implementing the articles in the regulations and opening up new avenues of lifelong education development, he introduced a method of promoting a lifelong learning culture by drafting legislation based on the Taiyuan model, which would include perfecting four-level community education institutions, creating urban and rural learning platforms that can serve entire cities, building up two active brands, and further exerting the role of three teams, and so on.
Professor Zheng Xinjian lectured the drafting and revising process for “Regulations Promoting Hebei Province Lifelong Education”. He analyzed the main problems and solutions discovered in the progress of making the rules, introduced the significance of the regulations and the effect on lifelong education development, and gave explanations of the regulations. He emphasized that the formulation of the regulations laid a legal foundation for lifelong education development by Hebei RTVU, and even the whole province, highlighted the important legal position of provincial open universities, provided broad space for the transformation development of the universities, instilled vitality and energy into the development of the educational goals of RTVUs, all of which is very important to lifelong education development.
Professor Sheng Guanghui explained the main problems and future trends related to our country’s lifelong education legislation, using the experience of drafting legislation in Fujian and comparing it to lawmaking work across the Taiwan Strait. He introduced in detail the practice and effects of creating new legislation in Fujian province, pointed out the main problems existing in lifelong education lawmaking in our country, including comparatively more policy documents and less laws and regulations, more relative regulations and less direct lawmaking, imperfect current rules and regulations on lifelong education, and so on. Through the comparative analysis of the important problems related to lifelong education lawmaking in the four places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, he proposed that our lifelong education legislation should stress five points, namely highlighting the guarantee of the citizens' right to education, the objectives of “lifelong learning”, integration of resources, the main points of the rules and regulations based on Taiwan's experience, and ensuring the security of the system.
Through discussion, all attending specialists and representatives agreed that local experience in lifelong education legislation could help local governments at all -levels and citizens from all walks of life have a clear notion about their own position, role, rights, and obligations in the process of implementing lifelong education, and could contribute to building up the lifelong education system with suitable local features, promoting the development of local lifelong education in accordance with the general goal of developing nationwide lifelong education.
During the training period, the representatives inspected the Gansu Branch of the Open University of China (OUC). Li Yanrong, Vice Party Secretary and Secretary of Discipline Inspection Commission of Gansu RTVU, introduced the current state of developing community education in Gansu to all specialists and attending representatives.
More than 50 representatives from national community education experimental zones, demonstration zones, experimental centres of the OUC, experimental bases and school-running systems of Radio and TV Universities (open universities) attended the class and discussion.
By Meng Jia, MOE Research & Training Centre for Community Education