The Notice on the Printing and Distribution of The Institutional Reform of Guangdong People’s Government issued by the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Guangdong People’s Government (No. 8, 2009) stipulates that Education Department of Guangdong Province be set up as one of the departments of Guangdong People’s Government. The Education Department of Guangdong Province shares offices with the Education Commission of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

I. Major Functions
(1) Implementing policies, laws and regulations on education stipulated by the Central Committee and Guangdong People’s Government, and drafting and carrying out local laws, regulations, rules and policies.
(2) Getting educational reform and development plan and annual plan drawn up, proposing and carrying out policies on reform of educational system, conducting studies on the strategy of educational reform and development, planning and offering advice on the geographical distribution of schools and universities at all levels with certain departments, and being responsible for gathering statistics, conducting analysis and releasing of data relevant to education.

(3) Being responsible for the unified management of education budget for provincial-level education organizations and institutions, working out policies jointly with other organizations concerned on raising education budget, collecting educational funds, attracting capital construction investment and charging education fees; supervising and collecting data on the input, the performance, and the use of financial allocations for education purposes at all localities; giving directions to schools or universities on their capital construction and financial administration.

(4) Having integrated management of compulsory education, general high school education, pre-school education and special education, and ethnic education; being responsible for promoting a balanced development of compulsory education and for advancing fair education; promoting transformation of elementary education and enforcing quality education in an all-round fashion.
(5) Being responsible for conducting an overall planning of, and a comprehensive adjustment and macro-management of vocational and technical education; undertaking the management related to vocational and technical education and adult education; giving directions to the administration of cultural education for adults, community education, staff education, and cultural and technical education for farmers.

(6) Conducting an integrative management of higher education, giving directions to the reform of the administrative system in universities, making arrangements for the verification of the setting-up, the renaming, the cancellation and the adjustment of universities, and making arrangements for the implementation of certain regulations on degree management of the state.
(7) Being responsible for the planning and the guidance of scientific research in the education sector; giving directions to the scientific and technological work of all kinds in universities; giving directions to the key discipline construction and the construction of scientific research innovation platform; giving directions to the combination of production, education and research and the relevant scientific and technological industrial work; giving directions to the practice of scholarship granting, financial aid granting and work-study program; giving directions to the rear service and university-run industries.
(8) Being in charge of supervising and examining the implementation of educational laws, regulations and policies in all kinds of schools or universities at all localities; being responsible for supervising administration and teaching; making arrangement for the implementation of educational laws; supervising and examining the performance of fulfilling educational responsibility and consolidating the work of both basically popularizing the nine-year compulsory education and basically wiping out illiteracy among the young and the adults; making arrangement for and giving directions to the supervision, and inspection and acceptance, of secondary and  lower secondary education; undertaking educational assessment; inspecting and supervising education quality and the standard for school-running.
(9) Giving directions to the pedagogical teaching, research and reform in all schools and universities; giving directions to the specialty construction, course construction and teaching material construction; planning and giving directions to educational informatization; giving directions to the audio-visual education programs, educational technology equipments, lab and library construction of schools or universities; making arrangement for approving course books and teaching materials; being responsible for supervising governmental purchase in the educational sector.
(10) Verifying and making arrangement jointly with departments concerned for implementing the enrollment plan of universities; giving directions to the enrollment tests and the roll management of all schools and universities; participating in the drafting of employment policies and entrepreneurial policies of the graduate students; giving directions to would-be university graduates and temporarily un-employed university graduates about the employment and the entrepreneurial work.

(11) Being in charge of the teachers’ affairs of the whole province; seeing to the implementation of various teacher qualification systems; planning and guiding the construction of teaching faculty and of the administration team in the education sector at all schools and universities; giving directions to the reform in personnel affairs in the education sector.

(12) Conducting overall planning, comprehensive coordination and management of all kinds of private education; standardizing the order of private education; gearing private education to healthy development.

(13) Planning, guiding and organizing foreign exchange and cooperation in the education sector; being responsible for affairs related to the government-sponsored students studying abroad in the whole province; giving directions to the administrative work of foreign students coming to study in Guangdong Province.

(14) Planning and guiding the promotion ofstandardization of Putonghua and Chinese characters.

(15) Planning and guiding the Chinese Communist Party building at different universities; administering, in coordination with Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, all the cadres of universities; giving directions to the construction of leading bodies in universities, the construction of the Party’s basic organization and the education management and the united front of the Party members.
(16) Giving directions to the ideological and political work, the moral education, the physical culture hygiene and the arts education, the national defense education and publicity; giving directions to the safety, stability and security work of schools or universities; giving directions to the audit-related work in the education sector.

(17) Undertaking other matters assigned by Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, Guangdong People’s Government and the Ministry of Education.