Education in Beijing

Education in Beijing includes information about primary and secondary schools in Beijing.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Education (simplified Chinese: 北京市教育委员会; traditional Chinese: 北京市教育委員會; pinyin: Běijīng Shì Jiàoyùwěiyuánhuì) is the local education authority. This education authority is currently headquartered in the Beijing Olympic Building (S: 北京奥运大厦, T: 北京奧運大廈, P: Běijīng Àoyùn Dàshà) in Haidian District, and it was previously headquartered in Xicheng District.

The institutions listed here are administered by China's Ministry of Education.

Just prior to the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China, Beijing had 13 institutions of higher education, 76 secondary schools, 358 primary schools including those public and private, and 21 nurseries and kindergartens. Of the secondary schools, 80% were private. At the time, 47% of all primary school-aged children in Beijing attended school. Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying, the authors of "Urban Education in Beijing: An international perspective," wrote that there were few schools located in poor neighborhoods. Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that "education in Beijing lagged far behind" that of the rest of the country prior to the founding of the People's Republic.

Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that education in Beijing "developed rapidly" after the 1949 founding. The municipal government established additional higher education facilities, acquired and reorganized schools, established new schools in lower class and working class areas, lowered age limits in the school admission policies, and decreased cutoff scores on achievement tests for working class children during the years 1949 through 1957. Departments of education were established for the Beijing municipality and each of the Beijing districts in 1954.

Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that in the Great Leap Forward period school activities were not focused on education and instead were "mostly devoted to political movements and productive labor" which produced a low educational quality. During the period many schools established school-operated factories that their students worked in, and the Beijing educational authorities established part-work part-study experimental schools and work-study programs.

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