Analysis on the Implementation Effects of "Provincial Coordination" in Compulsory Education Funding: Empirical Evidences from Guangdong Province

Based on evaluation standards of education finance, this paper discusses implementation and its effect of the reform of "Provincial Coordination" in compulsory education funding from Guangdong. It is found that Guangdong's overall arrangement has achieved initial results, but it has not fully realized the overall responsibility of education expenditure. On the one hand, provincial government has met the requirements of matching the supply and demand on compulsory education funding, reflecting a balanced orientation toward poor areas, counties and key groups in Guangdong, and provincial fiscal implementation targets have gradually expanded. On the other hand, problems such as the downward adjustment of fiscal responsibility, insufficient financial expenditure, unreasonable sharing ratio both educational funding and expenditure structure still need to be further solved. To conclude, it is proposed to gradually build a "Provincial Coordination and Provincial-Level Based" compulsory education funding system, expend the increment of provincial education expenditure and transfer payments, increase the proportion of personnel funding shared with governments below the provincial level, and strengthen the supervision and evaluation from central government over the allocation of compulsory education funding and from provincial governments below the provincial level to give full play to the role of provincial governments in balancing the allocation of regional education funds.