Public schools in China are administered by the National Ministry of Education. Whilst the Ministry supervises general guidelines such as staff recruitment, national budgets and formal examinations, specific regulations directly correlated to each public school are managed by their District and Provincial Commissions of Education (Chan, 2019). The government is responsible for all aspects of the public education system, including but not limited to staff salaries, yearly curriculum, internal assessments and external rankings (Wang, 2005).
Private schools in China are administered by private individuals or corporations (Lin, 1999). Unlike public schools which are managed by the government, each private school's independent board of directors is responsible for tasks such as staff and student recruitment, salaries, principal assignment and student fees (Wang, 2005).
History
Public schools
Following the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the government announced that workers were the most important class in society (Cheng, 1994). As such, the Ministry of Education established that henceforth, education must be made accessible to all workers, in order to favour the development of the country. By 1950, when the nation's first middle schools and universities commenced, all staff involved were given welfare entitlements like other proletariat members in the public division (Wang, 2005). This establishment of the new Chinese education system was constructed upon a combination of the Soviet model and elements of traditional China (Chan, 2019).
Throughout the 1900s, public education was subjected to several variations (Zhang, 2001). In particular, these temporary changes were a result of the 1958 Chinese educational revolution. As the development of the proletariat was prioritized, education gradually became combined with labour and production. Most schools were converted to half-study and half-labour schools, and many started to experiment with new systems of education on their own. Consequently, procedures, school organizations and the initially established education form from 1949 were terminated. During this time, the chairman of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong, also declared that students would be re-allocated to rural areas. The reason behind this was his belief that students would be able to learn the most from labour workers. Hence, from 1966 to 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, more than 16 million students were pulled out of school in order to be re-educated by working in the countryside. The policy of school education only resumed after 1977, when the Gang of Four political faction lost power (Wang, 2005).
Private schools
Unlike public institutions, schools administered by private bodies were established very early on in China (Wang, 2005). However, despite their being a fundamental component of the early educational system, they were forced to either shut down or transfer ownership to the administration of the central government in 1952 following the 1949 revolution that formed the People's Republic of China (Zhang, 2001). The direct order was released by the Chinese Ministry of Education, with the formal issue titled "The Direction of Transferring Private Primary and Private Middle School". This command was carried out in order for the economy to conform with the Soviet model the government wished to achieve – one that promoted a unified state management of education (Wang, 2005). It was not until 1992 that the re-emergence of private schools occurred, brought about by a statesman named Deng Xiaoping (Cheng, 1997). He referenced his speech in 1978 to restate his opinion on the linkage between education and science technology for the development of China. He declared that education was a necessity, due to its ability to drive the advancement of science and technology which he believed, was crucial for future expansion of China. He proclaimed that education could not rely on educational departments alone and stated the importance of support from industries and professions (Cheng, 1994). Following this economic reform, the first private school to be re-established was Guangya Primary School in Sichuan province. It was the attention this first school received that drove the development of other private schools in the country (Lin, 1999). Ultimately, the increasing need for education combined with gradual reform of China's economic system expanded the development of private schools (Wang, 2005).