From restoration to transitions: delineating the reforms of education inspection in China

This article examines the reforms of basic education inspection in China since 1977, which is accomplished by drawing from a historical institutionalism approach. The empirical analysis is based on policy documents and laws and is supplemented with interview materials. Throughout this work, we have identified three distinct periods: the restoration stage from 1977 until the 1990s, the formalization stage from the 1990s until 2007, and the transition stage from 2007 onwards. The changes of education inspections indicate there is a perceptible path dependency, especially in the change from the first stage to the second one, where the expansion of education inspections was to consolidate the selected path by enhancing its jurisdictive power and promoting its disposition in the educational system. Reforming these inspections to some extent proves the historical stance of “positive feedback” as coined by Pierson (2004) for the growing stage of an organization, but in fact, the expansion of the system appears also to be significantly more problematic or complex than a linear development that is based on positive feedback. From the transition stage, interaction with global players is increasing, with implications for the development of the school inspection system. The finding shows that by 2015, the collaboration with global players influenced the development of Jiance system—a large-scale assessment of students’ academic achievement at grade four and eight—which the inspection sector managed to incorporate into itself. The article argues that this decision to extend the spectrum of education inspection to assessment practices reflects the aspiration of the inspection authorities to reinforce the capacities to survive and thrive in the changing local and global environments of educational quality assurance and evaluation.