Double Reduction Policy

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The Double Reduction Policy (Chinese: 双减政策; pinyin: shuāng jiǎn zhèng cè) is an attempt by China to reduce homework and after-school tutoring pressure on primary and secondary school students, reduce families' spending on expensive tutoring, and improve compulsory education.[1]

On 24 July 2021, Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-Campus Training Burden of Students in Compulsory Education was issued by the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council of the People's Republic of China.[2] The policy was prompted by problems with high-stakes exam-oriented education, including the physical and mental health of students (e.g., lack of sleep, obesity, anxiety, and suicide).[3]

Background reason of policy formulation

Heavy time investment

The amount of time Chinese adolescents invest in their studies is among the highest in the world.[4] Students in Shanghai aged 12 to 14 spend 9.8 hours a day on on-campus studying.[4] Chinese students' average study time commitment is 55 hours per week, far beyond an international average of 44.[5]

Due to the competitive pressure of the

Senior High School Entrance Examination, Junior High School students in China's first-tier cities improve their school academic performance or academic competition through extracurricular tutoring.[4] In Shanghai, more than 45 percent of students attend math tutoring classes at least four hours a week, and more than 20 percent even invest more than four hours in attending tutoring classes.[4] Students from rural areas attend four-hour “evening sessions”offered by boarding schools.[4] In Chinese high schools, “evening sessions" do not end until 11 pm.[6] And Chinese adolescents' tutoring hours during weekends increased from 0.7 hours to 2.1 hours from 2005 to 2015.[7]

Lack of sleep and obesity

As students must finish their homework after cram school, their quality/quantity of sleep becomes affected. Therefore, lack of sleep has become a common trend among Chinese adolescents.[4][6] This problem is mainly caused by time-consuming homework.[8] Research conducted by the Afanti education platform in China has shown that 45% of participants have difficulties finishing homework.[9] 87.6% of interviewed junior or high schools students (aged from 13 to 18) finish homework after 10 pm and their average sleep hours are reduced to under 8 hours.[8] For primary school students (aged from 6 to 12), 13.3 percent of them suffered from insufficient sleep during weekdays.[10]

A positive correlation exists between the amount of homework given during weekdays and the proportion of overweight Chinese adolescents.[3] However, sleep duration on both weekdays and weekends shows a negative correlation with adolescent students.[3] The obesity rate among Chinese children aged 5 to 19 exceeded 18 percent in 2016, almost five times the obesity rate (4 percent) in 1975.[11] 7–9 years old young Chinese primary school students have the most significant obesity problem, "5.7% for boys and 8% for girls".[3] 19.6 percent of Grade 1 Chinese students are overweight. In addition, the obesity rate of primary school students in grades 1-3 increases faster than students in grades 4–6.[3]

Suicide and mental health

Suicide is the highest cause of death among Chinese teenagers.

Senior High School Entrance Examination and 高考 "gaokao" (National College Entrance Examination). Depression caused by stress is a main factor in suicide, and more than 10% of Chinese adolescents have depression.[14] Thirty-three percent of suicides are related to family conflicts, which is even higher than the suicide rate directly caused by study stress (twenty-two percent).[14] Moreover, China currently does not provide adequate psychological resources for students with psychological problems, which causes difficulty for students solving mental health problems.[13]

Purpose of policy implementation

Alleviate parental educational anxiety and pressure

Chinese families, influenced by

upper-class envy" and "lower-class fears" among Chinese parents, families tend to have significant educational expenditures, especially on expensive after-school tutoring.[16]

The high cost of education leads to significant economic pressure on Chinese families. The China Institute for Educational Finance Research (CIEFR)'s household survey showed that Chinese families spent $296 billion on preschool and primary education during 2016–2017.[17] This is despite the fact that Chinese governments fund compulsory education and school tuition is free. However, families in first-tier cities still spend an average of 16,800 yuan on education for students during the compulsory education stage.[17] Middle-class parents invested the most among all families in their children's education.[18][19] Middle-class parents want to build 'child capital' by increasing financial investment in after-school tutoring.[19]

Teachers' requirements also lead to extra burdens on Chinese parents. In China, some teachers obligate parents to help check and supervise their children's homework.[20] 91.2% of Chinese parents do so.[21] Those who fail can be reprimanded by teachers and accused of irresponsibility, which stresses the family and their relationships.[20] The Double Reduction Policy aims to alleviate this financial burden by strictly regulating the tutoring industry and reducing pressure on families.[1][22] It calls for the development of "home-school cooperative education," which guides parents toward reasonable expectations for their children. At the same time, the school provides after-school supervision to reduce parents' anxiety about tutoring classes and home supervision.[22]

Student-centered education

Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-Campus Training Burden of Students in Compulsory Education specifies the following policy measures to ease students' learning burden:[2][23]

  1. Clarify the total amount of homework by category. Schools should ensure that there is no written homework to be done at home for 1st and 2nd grades, but fixed homework amount can be appropriately on campus; the average time for completion of written homework for 3rd through 6th grades is not to exceed 60 minutes, and the average time for completion of written homework for middle school is not to exceed 90 minutes.
  2. Increase the quality of homework design. Give play to the diagnostic, consolidation, and analytic functions of homework, including homework design in the education and research system, systematically design fundamental reading that comports with the traits and learning principles for the age and embody the orientation towards student-centered education. Encourage the assignment of tiered, flexible, and personalized homework, resolutely overcome mechanical and ineffective tasks, and end repetitive and punitive reading.

The double reduction policy emphasizes the student-oriented learning mode of teaching students according to their aptitude and has further realized "the cultural approach."[1][15] Schools now offer courses across a broader range of interests.[1] Schools respect every student’s “differentiated learning needs,” personal strengths, and individuality so that students can achieve well-rounded development through “after-school services.”[1]

Primary and junior high schools in China are also explicitly required to outlaw rankings of students' academic performance.[24] The Ministry of Education has emphasized students' personality rights through the double reduction policy, to avoid the negative psychological pressure caused by the public examination ranking.[25] Banning rankings protects students' psychological self-esteem, especially for adolescents who are still in a fragile growth stage.[25] The abolition of rankings and “frequent formal exams” has ensured students' enthusiasm for learning and changed China's long grade-centered and test-oriented education system.[24][25]

Public sentiment on social media

Chinese netizens have publicly shared their personal views on the double reduction policy, showing the following patterns:

  1. Among the positive topics of public concern on
    Weibo, 45.9% discussed educational equity. The public believed that the double reduction policy could effectively solve the long-standing unequal distribution of educational resources.[26][27]
  2. About negative topics, the prominent topic the public mentioned is policy influence on
    Weibo discussion were mainly students, parents, tutoring institutions, and teachers.[28] Some parents complained about how hard it was to get tuition fees back after the double reduction policy's crackdown on tutoring institutions.[26][27]
  3. On Zhihu, parents' comments opposed the double reduction policy. They argued that the policy did not decrease parents' demand for tutoring classes. Still, they only caused higher prices and even created a larger educational resource gap.[29] In addition, parents believed that competition among students still existed. The closure of private institutes could create more significant parental pressure in supervising children's academic performance.[29] And some parents believed the double reduction policy was just a product of the Chinese government to encourage fertility.[29]
  4. Teachers' comments mostly vented their frustration with the increased workload but no change in income.[28] Some teachers expressed sadness, confusion, and fear about their future personal development and the breaking of their teaching habits.[28]
  5. The information spread by “self-media accounts” and "education opinion leaders" mostly expressed negative and skeptical opinions towards the double-reduction policy.
    KOLs in the field of education.[28] The rational and positive voice got covered within blaming posts.[28]

Effects

Influences on the Chinese tutoring industry

About 15 million people in China were employed in off-campus education and training before the policy was published.[22] On July 23, The State Council of the People's Republic of China announced that they would no longer issue new for-profit licenses for tutoring institutions and required existing ones to stop tutoring “core curriculum courses” for students having compulsory education.[30] All after-school tutoring institutions became non-profits.[30] The Chinese government also stated this heavy regulation on tutoring industry aimed to eliminate the unequal educational resource allocation phenomenon.[31]

After the double reduction policy was implemented, 10 million people experienced unemployment.[22] New Oriental Education Technology Group Co., Ltd. is a prominent player in the Chinese tutoring industry. Its stock price hit its “lowest point of 1.68 in August 2021”.[22] Based on the purpose of cutting costs and minimizing economic losses, New Oriental Education also cut staff and stopped shifting its business focus from K-12 education consulting to quality-oriented education.[22] Overall, the tutoring industry shrunk considerably. The number of offline tutoring institutions decreased by 83.8 percent, while online tutoring institutions decreased by 84.1 percent.[26] The tutoring industry became highly fungible because schools offered a wealth of learning resources in school, and 91% of students attend those activities.[26]

Improve adolescents' mental health

The problem of Lack of sleep and mental health problem has been slightly relieved after controlling the homework amount.[32] The rate of students with depression dropped from 9.9 percent to 9.4 percent, and students having anxiety dropped from 7.4 percent to 7.1 percent.[32] The proportion of primary and secondary school students able to complete their homework at school has risen from 46 percent to more than 90 percent, so adolescents now have more time to achieve work-life balance.[26][32]

Influences on teachers

Positive effect

Under the incentive of the double reduction policy, Chinese teachers could break their inherent educational methods.[33][34] Teachers actively improved their teaching ability and the quality of teaching content.[33] To enable students to complete their homework with less workload and shorter class time, Chinese teachers started to consciously "improve the teaching efficiency in the classroom."[33]

The double reduction policy also provided a more “favorable ideological environment” and career development space for ambitious teachers with better teaching abilities.[34] Middle-aged teachers born in the 1970s and 1980s were again inspired to participate in research projects and take the lead for younger teachers.[34] Young teachers could get more career development opportunities under the double reduction policy. Young teachers' awareness of innovation and advantages in information technology helped them stand out easily.[34]

Negative effect

From 2018 to 2020, teachers were negatively concerned about the potential increase in workload and insufficient rights protection caused by the double reduction policy.[34] The reasons evoking some teachers' resistance to the double reduction policy and occupational anxiety are as follows:

  1. Home-School conflict: After implementing the double reduction policy, parents believed that their children's education should be solely the responsibility of the school so that parents would reduce their attention to their children's education.[34] However, teachers still expected parents to take responsibility for supervising their children and actively communicated with the school about the student's situation.[35][34] Besides the conflict between parents and teachers' understanding of double reduction policy, there was also a role conflict because many teachers are both parents and teachers.[35] Teachers were unable to take care of their own families because the double reduction policy requires schools to provide "after-school services and homework design." Many teachers "feel sorry for their children" because of their conflicting identities.[35]
  2. Worry about students' academic performance: Some teachers discovered that the quality of teaching decreases in the short term after reducing the amount of homework.[34] In addition, some schools only altered the name of the "final exam" or no longer publicly announced students' "ranking," but schools still required teachers to achieve a higher average score for students.[34] Some teachers believe that the essence of exam-oriented education did not change.[34] So, they worried that reducing the amount of homework would affect students' academic performance.[35][34] The teachers' responsibility for students' better future made them face severe anxiety.[35]
  3. Difficult to assign homework: Teachers reflected that it was difficult to assign flexible and personalized homework tasks.[34] Especially in the case of large class sizes in China, teachers had difficulties designing flexible homework suitable for different students.[34] Because of the problem of assigning homework and developing teaching materials, many teachers (especially unauthorized teachers) began to doubt their teaching ability and show low self-efficacy.[35] Moreover, some teachers believed that personalized homework would lead to the failure to understand the actual academic level differences between students in the homework feedback and assessment stage.[35][34]

See also

References

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