A. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The use of schooling as a tool to spread Communist ideology and increase China's control in Tibet is not a recent ploy. In independent Tibet over 6000 monasteries and nunneries served as Tibet's educational institutes in addition to lay schools. From 1950 onwards, the Chinese authorities opened schools in various parts of Tibet, recruiting students only from aristocratic families or linked to prominent members of the Tibetan government. Chinese authorities later recruited some bright children of poor families into the Communist party and they were sent to China for further studies. Later many of them would return as teachers, engineers, and the Communist leaders of Tibet.

As was the case in other parts of China, the spread of Communist ideology continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s and it became a major goal to send Tibetan children to study in China. In the eastern part of Tibet especially, many parents were forced to send their children, including infants, to China for further studies. At the same time, some went to China voluntarily and were kept in special schools which enjoyed good facilities. Education, however, remained an indoctrination into Communist ideology, and often included curriculum that taught that the Tibetan tradition was backward.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tse Tung ideology discouraged the use of minority languages and tried to suppress any sense of minority consciousness. From 1966 Tibetan culture, tradition and society were labeled as "backward" and "blind faith" and Tibetan language, literature, arts and history were denigrated or ignored. Some time in the 1960s monk and nun teachers as well as qualified lay Tibetan teachers were ordered to leave their teaching jobs.

Education since the early 1980s took a slightly different direction but, while Communist zeal dimmed somewhat, the fundamentals of teaching remained the same.

The relaxation of travel conditions in 1984 made escapes from Tibet possible for the first time since the 1950s. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile estimates that in the ten years since 1984 between 6000 to 9000 Tibetan children and young adults have fled Tibet in order to seek educational opportunities in India and Nepal. About 5000 are reported to have joined monasteries and nunneries and around 4000 have joined lay schools in exile.

In 1996, of the 2000 Tibetans who arrived in Nepal on their way to seek exile India, approximately 45 percent were children and nearly 80 percent of these 500 or more children were sent unaccompanied by their parents in the hope that they would receive education in exile. 7 Some children do not even reach freedom. In December/January 1997 two young children died from illness and hypothermia attempting to reach Nepal and others have been robbed, beaten or deported by the Nepalese authorities 8.

B. STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORK

Primary level education in Tibet is the six-year lobchung. There are two types of lobchung: the mangtsug and zhungtsug schools. The mangtsug schools are set up by local people at the village level and receive no financial and facilitative support of any kind from the Chinese government. As a result the mangtsug schools are seriously lacking in resources and teaching staff and it is rare for a mangtsug student to complete the full six years and even more improbable that a mangtsug student will be able to proceed on to the middle school level.

zhungtsug schools are primary schools established by the Chinese government. They are found in the Tibetan cities and county headquarter towns and benefit an urban population which consists primarily of Chinese settlers. While a transfer from mangtsug to zhungtsug school is, theoretically, possible on the basis of a public examination, in reality it is said to rely heavily on personal contacts.

Those students who complete lobchung schooling then have a chance to enter a lobdring - a six-year middle school. The lobdring is divided into lower middle school and higher middle school, each of three years duration, and middle school students must choose to follow either a science or arts stream. As with the case of the government-run zhungtsug, the lobdring are found in the large urban areas. Occasionally middle school branches can be found in townships but in some cases two or more counties have just one middle school between them.

After completing the lower middle school, students choose between continuing their studies or commencing vocational training. Most Tibetans are likely to choose the latter as there is hope of earlier employment and earnings for their families while, on the other side, their chance of being admitted to higher education is slim given the high number of Chinese children competing for the positions.

While the majority of the lobchung students are Tibetan, at the level of middle school there is a disproportionate increase in the number of Chinese students. This is due to the high drop-out rate of Tibetan students after they have completed their sixth year of lobchung and to the fact that those Tibetans scoring top marks for their final lobchung exams are sent to China for further study. Such Tibetan students, after successfully completing their lower middle school in China, are not given seats to go to higher middle school and can only continue with vocational training.

At the level of higher middle school there is an even greater jump in the number of Chinese students and classes. This results from a combination of factors: the increasingly high drop-out for Tibetan students; the choice of the majority of Tibetans who complete lower middle school to undertake vocational training; and, most significantly, the large number of Chinese students from China who manage to secure registration in Tibet through their personal connections. These students are attracted to Tibet because they have failed to secure a seat in a higher middle school in China or to boost their chance to gain a university seat in Tibet where the entrance standard is considerably lower than in China.

Admission to university is through a common entrance examination but the medium of examination is in Chinese for almost all courses.9 Chinese school graduates from Tibet are able to secure the majority of seats in Tibet's universities and those universities in China intended for those who have finished schooling in Tibet. Increasingly, Chinese students who fail to gain entrance to a university in China go to Tibet to re-sit their examination.

It was reported that in 1979 only 60 of the 600 "TAR" students pursuing university education in Tibet and China were Tibetan; in 1984 of the 1,984 students enrolled in Tibet's three big schools, only 666 were Tibetan and, in the same year, only 60 to 70 of the 250 students sent to universities in China were Tibetan.10

C. CHINA'S "LIBERATION" OF TIBET'S SCHOOLS

The Chinese government claims to have 'liberated' the old system of Tibet and to have replaced it with a modern system. In 1992, China's State Council issued "Tibet - Its Ownership and Human Rights Situation", published as a White Paper. The White Paper claims that, "in the last four decades and more in Tibet, 18,000 students have graduated from universities and colleges; 510,000 from primary and secondary schools, and more than 15,000 cadres were trained in rotation."

It was admitted in a Chinese official publication in 1986 that; "There are only 58 middle-level schools [in the "TAR"] and out of them only 13 are real middle schools. Altogether, there are 2450 primary schools in Tibet. Out of them only 451 are funded bythe government ... Only 45 percent of the children of school-going age go to primary schools. From them, 10.6 percent manage to graduate to the lower-middle school. In other words, 55 percent of the children do not even get primary-level education." 11

The Chinese also argue that "the children and farmers and herdsmen enjoy free boarding and education."12 This does not seem to be true in large areas inhabited by farmers and herdsmen, which constitute 95% of the total population of Tibet. Chinese sources admit; "At present 90 percent of farmers and herders do not receive lower middle level education".13

Despite repeated claims by China that they provide free education to Tibetan children in Tibet, Document No. 12 ("Party Affairs Communication, July 1993") of the "TAR" Party Committee - an internal party document - states that schools in Lhasa were collecting 13 different kinds of fees from students and that six of these were not authorised by law. These fees do not take into account other expenses borne by Tibetan students such as classroom furniture and teachers' gifts.

If school numbers alone are to be taken as a measure, the access to education has indeed increased dramatically in Tibet today. In its Written Replies to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1996, the Chinese government announced that, as at the end of 1995, Tibet had 103 secondary vocational schools, 650 complete primary schools and 3300 lower primary schools in rural areas. Secondary school enrolment in Tibet was reported as 33,000 and 258,650 students were enrolled in primary schools, bringing the total number of enrolments in Tibet to a reported 70 percent of school age children.14

Yet a different picture emerges when these figures are analysed closely. Only 451 of 2451 schools, or 25%, were financed by the government in 1986.15 The rest were lobchung or community-run schools which, despite claims of the Chinese government that "special funds are allocated to improve local school facilities" 16, face critical financial shortages. As reported in an official Chinese publication: "Over 2000 of these [primary] schools are funded by the Government. These schools do not have a sound foundation and are not properly equipped. The level of education is either completely nil or extremely low." 17

This lack of stable financial resources as well as infrastructure is reflected in the low literacy rate of Tibet, despite the claims of the Chinese government that marked improvements have been made in this field. Some sources have given figures of 73 percent or 78.3 percent illiteracy in Tibet18, contrasting with China where a rate of 15.8% has been given19. A 1986 Chinese government publication estimated the illiteracy rate in Tibet at 44.43 percent of the Tibetan population against more than 90% before the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet by China in the early 1950's20 and in 1996 China declared that this figure had dropped to 40%21.

A claim of 60 percent literacy in Tibet is difficult to maintain when it is considered that, by 1986, 55 percent of the children were not receiving a primary-level education22 . China in general has a 98.5% enrollment rate of primary school-age children23, whereas Tibet lags behind with only 64% enrolment rate24.

A considerable proportion of the education allocation of the "TAR" Government goes to fund those schools in China where each year Tibet's most promising primary school graduates are sent. These include the middle schools in the Chinese cities of Shanghai (Hui Nationality Middle School), Lingtong (Lingtong County Middle School, Shanxi), Beijing (Nationalities Middle School) and Chengdu (Chengdu Nationalities Middle School, Sichuan), and the Lanzhou Meteorological Institute in Gansu province. All school facilities including buildings, equipment, food, clothing and lodging are paid for by the "TAR" Government.

In addition, it is believed that between thirty and fifty percent of the total educational spending of the "TAR" goes to the "Institute for Nationalities" located in the Xianyang locality of the Chinese city of Xian, capital of Shanxi Province25. This "Tibet University" reportedly offers the best facilities among all the schools meant for Tibetans, but it is located in China and most of its students are Chinese who completed their schooling in Tibet.

Educational outlay in Tibet also includes expenditure on separate schools and facilities for the large number of Chinese students studying in Tibet and salaries and facilities to the incoming Chinese teachers and other educational staff.

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Last updated: 29-Sept-97