For almost 10 years, my countryBasic educationReforms aimed at achieving universal access to compulsory education, with balanced, double-reduced and five-child education, have continued to fall, and the overall development of education is visible. But at the same time, a pseudo-educative fermentation that is created by traffic from the media, one-sided theory, one-size-fits-all execution, and misalignment of resources continues to ferment, laminate into irresolvable layersStructural conflictsNumerous teachers, parents and students are trapped in the mud。
The ministry of education's various rounds of monitoring of the quality of basic education throughout the country for the period 2025-2026 show that the reality is fragmented: on the one hand, the number of hours of operation in schools and open out-of-school training institutions has fallen significantly; on the other hand, the costs of family education invisibility, the anxiety of young people's education, the dyslexia of teachers in urban and rural areas and the confrontation of schools have not risen. A number of “net-red education specialists” with no first-line teaching experience, export extreme one-sided views of parenting and correction in short video and social platforms; implement reforms in parts of the country that are mechanically rigid and detached from the reality of rural-urban and inter-school disparities; and do not fundamentally change the command bar for the promotion of education, leading to the creation of a deformity of the “observed roll”。
Based on public research by the ministry of education, official reading by the people's daily newspaper, and research by the members of the national political consultative council in the field of education, the present document objectively summarizes the six fundamental structural contradictions that have gradually been revealed over the last decade, without denying the state's rightEducation reformIn the general direction, only the distortion of the landscape is to be seen in a way that clears up the many forces that breeds it, while at the same time interpreting the course of the 15th education plan and giving parents and teachers a clear perspective on the current basic education。
I. The root causes of the chaos: the combined forces of three kinds have led to the creation of a decade of false education
Prior to the analysis of the six major structural disasters, the core drivers of the disruption of basic education should be identified, not as a single policy or group, but as a result of the imbalance caused by the long-term resonance between the three factors。
Unqualified “psychological education specialists” lead family education awareness
A large number of media leaders, who have never been fully educated in primary and secondary schools and lack the qualifications of professional education, rely on extreme views for the flow of extremes: either to advocate “happy education” in its entirety or to sell “super-preschool” to win the two opposing extreme theories of the starting line. In 2026, a sample study by the eastern bureau of education showed that nearly 40 per cent of parents in the lower grades had long been affected by a fragmented short video view of child-rearing, that educational cognitive swings had been severed and that family education had lost its steady pace。
Implementation of “one-size-fits-all” at some grass-roots level, away from genuine school conditions
The top-level design science is long-term, but some districts and schools do not combine the current situation of teachers, students and hardware. In rural schools, there is a huge gap between sound teachers, who are still forced to synchronize the whole range of probity and labour courses in urban areas; ordinary salaried families who are unable to take on training in literacy are being held hostage to various kinds of evaluation activities, and the reform was initially distorted by a hierarchy。
3. The bottom logic of the evaluation, which is grade-only, is not completely reversed
The core selection criteria for advanced, middle and middle examinations remain roll scores, school examinations are tied to promotion rates, and parents select grades. Even if policies continue to decline, competitive pressures will simply shift from open training institutions to private education, home-based brushes, and high-priced classes, creating a closed inner circle of “column-depression, out-of-school pressure”, which is the ground floor for all the elephants。
Ii. Six structural disasters, 10 years of deep and hard education
(i) catastrophe i: structural fragmentation of the reproductive system, “severe bias”
The state has made it clear that the moral and intellectual integrity of the human person is comprehensive, but the reality is one of a structural imbalance that is derelict, intellectually biased, physically weak, less beautiful and less laboured, the core contradiction being that teacher staffing does not keep pace with parenting requirements。
Research data from the ministry of education for 2025 show that only 78. 3 per cent of teachers in rural compulsory education schools in rural areas, less than 50 per cent in remote districts, a large number of rural primary schools rely on language, mathematics and interdisciplinary teacher programmes, and there is a serious lack of specialization in the fields of procreation and physical education。
On the one hand, the policy requires a section of physical education every day, manual labour and art, and on the other hand, schools lack full-time teachers, specialized classrooms and equipment. In some schools, beauty and labour education can be used only as photo- and card-setting tasks。
All resources, examinations and evaluations are directed at languages, students spend most of the day on brushing, exams, physical exercise and free outdoor exercise hours. The commission's data show that the national near-sightedness rate for primary school pupils exceeds 52. 7 per cent and the moderate school anxiety rate for secondary school students exceeds 42 per cent, which is the direct physical and psychological cost of the five-child imbalance。
(ii) disaster ii: misalignment of urban and rural resources and waste of “crowded towns, weak villages” resources in both directions
This is a space-based structural contradiction that has not been fully resolved for a decade, and population movements are completely disconnected from school layouts and are at two extremes:
1. Overloading of urban hotspot schools
The urbanization has continued, with the concentration of the population in urban and new urban areas, delays in the construction of additional public degrees in new sub-districts, the number of major classes in urban areas, the number of pupils in primary and lower secondary schools, the number of pupils in one class, and the number of teaching and management tasks per teacher has doubled, making it difficult to adapt。
2. Wasteful small-scale rural schools
The rural school-age population continues to decline, with a large number of small villages with fewer than 100 students attending school and long periods of idle school buildings, laboratories and multimedia equipment. High-quality teachers continue to move to urban areas, with only middle-aged teachers retained in villages, making it difficult for them to retain good teachers with fewer resources and in a vicious circle。
The teacher rotation system is accompanied by inadequate policies, a large number of short-term teachers, insufficient job titles, housing and subsidy incentives, the difficulty of having quality teachers take root in rural areas in the long term and the gap in the quality of education between urban and rural areas is difficult to narrow。
(iii) catastrophe iii: double-reduced invisibility and no reversal of household expenditure on education
The double-deductible policy, by reducing the number of undergraduate training institutions by 92. 3 per cent, was intended to reduce the burden of household economy and student studies, but it led to the creation of a structural invisibility training industry chain, which created a circle of “shown-down, under-priced internal rolls”。
In 2026, the national political consultative council (cnc) announced that there were more than 540,000 private-sector institutions, small groups, home-based teachers, and that the cost of counselling was increasing rapidly and that only middle-income families could afford it, further widening the educational gap。
Monitoring data from the ministry of education show that households in the first-line cities spend 28. 7 per cent of their annual income on education, with an average of $113,000 per year on education for single children in the country; even though there has been a significant reduction in the number of academic institutions, the overall investment of parents in education has continued to rise. Ordinary working families are unable to afford high-cost private education and are able to keep their children in their homes, with their average daily working hours still exceeding the state standard, with an average of 2. 3 hours per day in the upper grades of primary school and 3. 6 hours per day in lower secondary school, generally less than seven hours of sleep。
(iv) catastrophe iv: the boundaries of school responsibilities are blurred and educational pressures are shifted to families
Over the past decade, the concept of co-production has been polarized and has led to structural responsibilities: a large number of teaching and management tasks that should be carried out by schools are passed on to parents through parent groups, online cards and parent-child assignments。
Manual copying, labour practices, production of science and various online response cards require parents to accompany them throughout the course; class hygiene, activities and the procurement of teaching aids frequently call for parents to volunteer. First-line teachers are also required to complete a large number of administrative statements, online publicity, evaluation materials of various kinds, preparation of classes and teaching hours, and the quality of classroom teaching is affected。
On the one hand, teachers are overstretched and unable to cultivate their teaching; on the other hand, parents work during the day and at night carry out a large number of supplementary teaching tasks, with frequent conflicts between parents. Many parents have stated openly that half of the pressure on education is transferred from schools to families, and that dual-career families are simply unable to cope, which is a central contributing factor to the continuing increase in school rivalry。
(v) catastrophe v: internet pseudo-educative rhetoric is widespread and family education awareness is polarized break
The short video platform has become the main arena for the dissemination of false educational ideas, with two extreme theories that repeat parents, create cognitive tearing and create a long-term structural disaster:
The first extreme is one of one-sided “happy education”, which totally rejects the cultivation of basic habits and advocates non-criticism, non-problems and lower grades. Research by the department of multi-education shows that at the lower grades affected by this view, there are widespread problems of writing grass, low levels of attention and weak awareness of the rules, and that there are significant faults in the learning power after reaching the third grade。
The second extreme is the trafficking of “over-front internal anxiety”, which promotes primary school knowledge in kindergartens, lower secondary school content in primary schools, and the packaging of pre-primary education as a “thinking promotion”, which constantly stimulates parents to report on high-priced literacy and thinking courses。
The two completely opposing extremist sets of views have been set aside, parents have no professional ability to identify, and today they are growing up with the wind, and tomorrow they are going through precursors, with children learning the rhythms being disrupted, and family education being completely lost in its stable direction and over time。
(vi) disaster vi: a single solidification of the evaluation system and structural blockage of multiple talent pathways
The largest structural contradiction in basic education today is the single evaluation criteria: the secondary and advanced examinations are based only on roll scores as the core selection rule, the combined quality assessment weight is extremely low and the social recognition of vocational education is inadequate。
All schools, parents and students are forced to compete around scores, and arts, sports, labour and innovation practices are difficult to incorporate into core examinations. Even though the state has made great efforts to develop comprehensive high schools and vocational education, there is still a general bias in society towards “senior, no-name schools” where parents prefer to pay for remedial work and not allow their children to choose their career path。
A single system of evaluation leads to a chain of negative results: students focus only on score scores, lack of skills, innovative thinking and capacity-building to resist setbacks; a large number of secondary school students are chronically in competitive anxiety, with anaemic learning and psychological problems increasing from year to year; supply and demand for quality vocational education resources are mismatched and multiple channels of talent are lacking。
Clarifying the key: do not confuse “top-level reforms” with “destroys”
An objective and rational approach to basic education in the present must distinguish between two completely different concepts and avoid a blanket rejection of the broader picture of educational reform:
1. National top design is scientific and long-term
The two-sum reduction, five-child reduction, compulsory education, parity, teacher rotation, vocational education, 15-fifth plan to expand the supply of state-run high school degrees, all of which address issues such as education, urban-rural disparities, and pupils ' physical decline, are aimed at providing a basic education of equal quality and quality for every child。
2. Discretion from multiple layers of implementation distortion, lag in supporting mechanisms, misleading external flows
The six major structural disasters are not the problem of policies per se, but rather the secondary problems of one-size-fits-all implementation, the failure of accompanying policies to keep pace, the slow pace of reform of educational advancement, the disruption of internet-based poor educational discourse, and the proliferation of social competition anxiety。
The state has long been aware of the various structural contradictions, and the 15th plan for the development of education, published in 2026, clearly sets out a course of reorientation to gradually decipher the long-accumulated and hard-on-ground injuries。
Iv. 15-55 education reform landing: targeting the six structural contradictions
In response to a decade of structural damage to education, the 15th plan offers a clear course of balance and diversification, reducing the incidence of false education from its root causes:
1. Completing village teacher boards to optimize rural and urban resource allocation
Promotion of regularized rotation of teachers in district areas, improvement of rural teacher titles, housing and subsidy incentive policies; dynamic adjustment of school layouts in urban and rural schools, strict control over urban class sizes, construction of “small and fair” standardized rural schools, balancing urban and rural hardware and teacher gaps。
2. Regulating invisibility training in schools and reducing the economic burden of family education
Ongoing rigorous monitoring of training in private education, crowd-raisering and hosting institutions in disguised subjects; expansion of the coverage of after-school services, free job coaching, basic literacy courses and reduced reliance on home-to-school fee training。
3. Clearing the boundaries of home-school responsibilities and eliminating the seamless transfer of tasks to parents
(c) the introduction of family planning protocols, specifying that primary responsibility for teaching and management rests with the school, eliminating non-necessary parental cards and manual parental tasks, streamlining administrative statements for teachers and ensuring that teachers are given time to study and study。
4. Counterfeiting the internet and teaching self-media to guide science family education watch
The internet, the education sector jointly regulates the content of the short video ultra-childcare stream, promotes the scientific education content of first-line teachers, regular educational institutions and regularization of community and school home education classes。
5. Deepening the evaluation reform of the mid- and high-level examination and broadening the path of diversity into talent
Gradually increase the weight of integrated quality evaluation, increase the size of integrated high schools and science high schools, increase the social acceptance of quality vocational education, break down the inherent bias of “score-only, general-high” and divert from the competitive pressure of single-level education。
6. Rigorous implementation of the five-child balance to enhance students ' physical and mental health
It guarantees daily physical activity for a long period of time, is equipped with full-time sound and psychological teachers in primary and secondary schools, integrates the physical and mental health of students into the core school examinations, and reverses the unbalanced parenting pattern, which focuses only on cultural subjects。
End of thought
All kinds of pseudo-educative disorder and six major structural injuries that emerge from a decade of basic education are never the fault of a single group. They are the result of a combination of urbanized population movements, delayed resource allocation, a single evaluation system, bad traffic rhetoric and mechanical implementation. While we cannot deny the enormous human progress that has been made as a result of reforms such as universal compulsory education, double-reduced and balanced development, we cannot avoid the fact that rural-urban disparities, the in-house consumption of schools, the invisibility of children, and the five-child imbalance are really afflicting millions of families。
The essence of education is that of the literian, who cultivates the general human being for physical and mental health and comprehensive development, rather than an endless competition of points. In order to fully rationalize the basic education environment, it is necessary, on the one hand, that the state continue to carry out a series of reforms aimed at consolidating the institutional, resource-based, evaluation-level structural gaps; on the other hand, that parents take the initiative to identify the perception of cyber-defunct pseudo-pedagogical education and to put an end to the two-fold mentality of extreme internalization or nursing; and that teachers return to their teaching roles in the classroom, where they are assigned to their respective schools and to maintain their educational boundaries。
Education is never a short-term slogan, and breaking the structural contradictions accumulated over a decade requires gradual, multi-pronged action. It is only through the collective rejection of utilitarian and radicalized pseudo-educative thinking that basic education can return to the very heart of the child and truly reduce the multiple internal costs of children, parents and teachers。
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