Hundred Days’ Reform 百日维新 in 1898 started the calling of reforms in many areas, including education. Imagine in a modern nation where there were no MOE, no teacher training, no standard curriculum, no common school leaving examinations, etc. Too many new things to learn and to adapt. Of course it would take many years. One would imagine that for basic education in China at that time, practical reforms started first. Since there were only Home Schools (私塾) in villages and towns, the traditional scholarly texts like 四书五经 would be critically appraised to reduce to quickly accommodate western teachings like mathematics (Arabic numeric symbols were probably introduced only at that time) and English language and sports, for example. The new school statue 癸卯学制 in 1903 set the guidelines on school systems: class management, level promotion, etc. The actually implementation (with reviews and revisions) spanned many many years.
Calling of reforms started earlier and there were already ‘schools’ around in mainland as well as overseas like Indonesia, etc., with Chinese parents serious in the Chinese education of their children. But these schools were ‘primitive’ and followed the 四书五经 kind of syllabus, and the old scholars who were employed knew only how to teach these. There was no uniform standards to compare, from school to school, or to promote from one level to the next. In the end there was only the 科举考试 to take. When the Qing government started to reform, they looked into the subjects of teaching to change first to turn out useful manpower for industry (in the reform ), military (sports), transport, business (math, science and English) At the beginning the teachers (the old scholars) sat in the classroom to learn with the pupils from the outside expert teachers – that’s their teacher training. That could happen before the school on school systems: class management, level promotion, etc. were formalized as a national standard. Time lag between the 癸卯学制 being implemented and the change in subject teaching was the same in the mainland or overseas. A ministry of education could form only after the standards were formally adopted.