Tianjin elementary education values high quality and a balanced resource allocation. It puts lots of efforts in developing preschool education, compulsory education and constructing modern schools, enhancing teachers’ overall qualification and a balanced education resource allocation between rural and urban areas.

Through the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, Tianjin’s compulsory education rate of students staying at school has reached 99 percent, and the average education years of the incoming labor force are 15.4 years.

The scarcity of kindergarten education is a hot issue among Tianjin public. In recent years, Tianjin pays great attention to preschool education, and in 2010 it launched a three-year plan to enhance preschool education. In 2013, the second round of the three-year plan was started off, and in 2015 the city built or restored altogether 75 kindergartens. At the same time, it emphasizes rural preschool education, expands supply chains for its preschool educational resources, and fully advances its public educational services.

In 2016, Tianjin plans to build or rebuild 40 more kindergartens, refurnish 120 kindergartens, and promote the standards of rural kindergarten construction.

It also plans to issue standards and school security subsidy for private kindergartens, and normalize and support 150 private ones. Since 2015, Tianjin has fully carried out test-free compulsory education and students could choose the nearby school. The project not only needs a scientific school district division, but also promotes balanced educational resources, to run each school well in the communities. Exchanges of teachers and headmasters across schools are also carried out, and related guiding directives are made, and a wide range of exchanges are provided.

By 2016, the city will finish the evaluation of 100 compulsory schools, and further improve the guarantee mechanism of education budget. The city is promoting nine-year education system, school coalition, entrusted management, and education group. A project of modernizing high school in the city is launched from 2016 to 2020, and 24 key high schools have been evaluated as the first group listed in the project, while another ten schools will be created as famous educational brands. This year, the city also pushes forward the position promoting system reform of primary and middle school teachers, to unify the promotion standards and improve the evaluation of professional titles and post engagement system.

Tianjin has completed the vocational education reform as a national pilot program, and has developed a route of innovation. It keeps putting innovative ideas into practice, and has accumulated some experience that could be promoted. The city has held national vocational skill competition for 8 years, and has set up a modern vocational education system that better links each educational phase.

It has also finished building Haihe Education Park, to promote educational resource sharing, and has set up the first applied technology college in the country. Seven high-level vocational schools have passed the national check. The city has also won the national special award for vocational education. Higher education has been significantly improved in recent years. In 2016, Tianjin has started to reform some of its higher institutions with an emphasis on application-oriented style, and has applied a series of measures to encourage the educational transition.

A number of schools has been selected as the pilot ones of vocational education reform, including traditional Chinese medicine university, sports institution, music institutes, fine arts schools and technology universities. Disciplinary development is monitored, graduate students classification has been improved, PhD candidate elimination system is set up and the government scholarship for overseas students in Tianjin is established. An integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei education mechanism is also set up, and Tianjin is attracting renowned universities in the capital to set up branches in the city.