Establishing School Curriculum Administration in China

For whom does the curriculum exist? To whom does it benefit? Administrators, headmasters, teachers, or children? Who develops the curriculum for children? By curriculum experts, administrators, headmasters, teachers, or students and their parents? Is it formed unilaterally or through negotiation? Do parents have the right to know the school curriculum, and to suggest changes or to evaluate? Such questions are boiled down to how curriculum power should be distributed among the national government, local jurisdictions, schools, and other stakeholders, which has also driven the reform of school curriculum administrative system in primary and high schools in China. From Chinese experiences, a curriculum administration system is designed to formally delegate rights and obligations of curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation among different administrative levels, while in process such a system is built on the level-across role mediation through compromising and consensus-seeking.