On the legal regulation of German youth non-school education and its significance for China

Abstract

 Extracurricular youth education constitutes a critical form of education for preventing juvenile delinquency and promoting the holistic development of young people. It functions as a complementary and mutually reinforcing component alongside formal schooling and family education. Germany possesses a well-established legal framework for extracurricular youth education, characterized by clear statutory purposes, advanced philosophical underpinnings, and diversified objectives. This framework comprehensively regulates and guides extracurricular youth education across multiple domains—including professional qualification requirements, admission mechanisms for non-public educational institutions, and institutional quality control systems—thereby effectively fostering the sound and orderly development of the sector. In contrast, China has yet to establish an independent and comprehensive legal system for extracurricular youth education, leaving considerable regulatory gaps and deficiencies within the existing legislative landscape. Accordingly, drawing on the German model, China may construct and refine a contextually grounded legal framework for extracurricular youth education. Such institutionalization would address prevailing challenges through rule-of-law mechanisms and advance the sustainable development of extracurricular youth education in China.