成人直播

Juanjuan Meng, Hui Wang, Yu Yang, Mingshan Zhang^[1]

Overview

• Our study finds that following the implementation of China’s "Double Reduction" policy, students' academic workload decreased by roughly one-quarter, while family educational expenditures and parents' time investment dropped by approximately 15%. Several mental and physical health indicators for both students and parents also showed significant improvement.

• Families where parents hold bachelor's degrees or lower experienced a relatively larger reduction in educational investment, along with greater mental and physical health benefits for both students and parents in these households.

• Families’ education-related decisions may be influenced by the investment levels of surrounding families. Parents’ attitudes toward academic competition and their perceptions of other parents’ actions affect their decisions regarding education-related expenditures.

• Future education reforms should focus on balancing the development of basic educational resources and quality across different regions, between urban and rural areas, and among families with varying socio-economic backgrounds to improve the well-being of parents and students, curb excessive competition, and foster the comprehensive and healthy development of basic education in China.

In 2021, Chinese authorities introduced a set of guidelines aimed at reducing the excessive burden of homework and after-school tutoring for students in compulsory education, commonly known as the "Double Reduction" policy. The guidelines prohibited local authorities from approving the establishment of new private tutoring institutions offering after-school academic training to promote educational equity, reduce students’ workload, and reinforce the primary role of public schools in providing education and instruction.

This article presents the first comprehensive study using micro-level household data on education-related decisions and behaviors to quantitatively analyze the effects of the "Double Reduction" policy in practice. The study surveyed approximately 2,000 parents of primary and secondary school students across 157 cities in 29 provinces in China, covering two semesters before and after the policy’s implementation. The collected data includes detailed information on pre- and post-policy measurements of workload from both in-school and after-school learning, family educational expenditures, the mental and physical well-being of students and parents, and their attitudes toward the education system and the "Double Reduction" policy itself. The study examines the policy's impact on students' workload and family educational investments, offering insights into the continued advancement and optimization of education policies.

I. The Impact of the "Double Reduction" Policy

1. Effectiveness in Reducing Academic Workload

The study finds that, compared to the semester prior to the implementation of the "Double Reduction" policy, the total time students spent on after-school studies decreased significantly by 0.543 hours per day, roughly one-quarter of the pre-policy average of 2.25 hours. Additionally, the average school start time was delayed by approximately 14 minutes, while dismissal time was pushed back by about 11 minutes. This change is likely due to schools beginning to offer after-school care services as required by the “Double Reduction” policy, to better accommodate parents’ work schedules.

Regarding off-campus learning, the policy led to a significant reduction of 0.683 hours per week in after-school academic tutoring, representing a 29% decrease from the pre-policy level. However, non-academic learning hours, such as sports and arts training, remained largely unchanged.

Time spent on school-assigned homework also decreased by 25 minutes, approximately one-quarter of the pre-policy average of 1.76 hours. Additionally, the reduction in after-school tutoring also decreased the time required to complete assignments from those sessions. As parents, on average, did not compensate for the reduction of homework by assigning more tasks at home, these findings indicate that the "Double Reduction" policy has significantly eased students' academic workload from both in-school and after-school learning.

2. Changes in Family Educational Expenditure

The "Double Reduction" policy has not only reduced academic workload within schools but also limited the operational scope of after-school teaching institutions. Compared to the pre-policy semester, the average monthly educational expenditure of families decreased by CNY 281, down from the previous CNY 2,452, signifying a 3 percentage point reduction in the proportion of family income spent on education from the previous level of 21.9%. Specifically, expenditure on after-school academic tutoring decreased by CNY 73 from a pre-policy average of CNY 234 per week, while spending on non-academic learning remained unchanged, as it was not directly affected by the policy.

Before the policy, parents spent an average of 1.2 hours per day supervising and accompanying their children during after-school study at home. Following the policy's implementation, as students’ after-school workload decreased, parents' time investment in supervision also dropped by about 15%. This reduction, combined with more flexible and accommodating school dismissal times, has alleviated pressure and reduced time costs for parents.

3. Impact on Parents' and Students' Mental and Physical Wellbeing

The study also examined whether parents' and students' mental and physical health improved following the implementation of the "Double Reduction" policy. Using a 0-10 scale (where lower scores indicate a significant reduction in stress levels, 5 indicates constant stress levels, and higher scores indicate a significant increase in stress levels), parents assessed changes in various aspects of their own and their children’s well-being. Parents’ average stress score was 4.554, statistically significantly below the score of 5, indicating a decrease in parents’ average stress levels during the semester following the policy’s implementation. Additionally, parents reported improvements in their physical health and parent-child relationships.

Most notably, parents believed that their children’s mental and physical health improved significantly, with average scores exceeding 7 points. Additionally, students experienced a small reduction in academic pressure, while their motivation to learn improved. Overall, the "Double Reduction" policy has effectively reduced academic workload and stress, lowered family educational expenditures, and improved the mental and physical well-being of both parents and students.

II. The Influence of Parents’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors on Policy Effectiveness

Building on the overall reduction in student workload and stress following the implementation of the "Double Reduction" policy, this section further examines the variation in the policy's effectiveness across different households.

1. Heterogeneity by Parents’ Educational Attainment

After the policy’s implementation, students across all backgrounds experienced a reduction in after-school study time. However, on average, students from families where both parents held bachelor's degrees or lower saw a greater reduction, while parents with graduate degrees increased the amount of home-assigned coursework, leading to a less pronounced decrease in their children’s after-school study time. In terms of educational expenditure, parents with bachelor's degrees or lower significantly reduced both their financial investment in education and the time spent supervising their children’s studies following the “Double Reduction” policy, whereas parents with graduate degrees showed little reduction in financial investment and maintained nearly the same level of supervision.

In terms of mental and physical health, the study found that improvements in parents’ stress levels, students’ mental well-being, and students’ learning motivation were positively correlated with the magnitude of the reduction in student workload. In the semester following the implementation of the “Double Reduction” policy, families where parents hold bachelor's degrees or lower saw greater improvements in parental stress levels, largely due to a more substantial reduction in student workload and educational expenditure. Notably, students from these families also experienced a greater increase in self-motivation to learn. In contrast, parents with graduate degrees experienced minimal reductions in educational investments and stress, and the mental health improvements for their children were less pronounced compared to their peers.

2. The Influence of Parent Attitudes and Beliefs

To better understand the mechanisms behind the observed heterogeneity, the study analyzed a range of parental attitudes and beliefs. Overall, all parents believed that the "Double Reduction" policy had a positive impact on their children, with those having lower educational attainment perceiving a greater positive effect.

Given that educational investments often have a competitive or social dimension, families’ education-related decisions may be influenced by the investment levels of other families. The study also explored parents’ beliefs and behaviors regarding competition or social comparison in after-school learning. It found that parents with higher educational attainment were less likely to believe that other parents would reduce after-school tutoring or study time following the policy’s implementation. The study revealed that parents who believed that other parents would increase tutoring after the policy significantly increased their own educational expenditures as a proportion of income, while those who believed others would decrease tutoring significantly reduced their own educational expenditure.

III. Policy Implications

The findings of this study provide insights for further optimizing education policies by examining households’ micro-level education-related decisions and behaviors. Competition and parental anxiety regarding children’s educational achievements often lead to suboptimal outcomes similar to a “prisoner’s dilemma.” This study demonstrates that the “Double Reduction” policy has positively influenced this dynamic, contributing to an improvement in overall welfare.

To effectively reduce the financial burden of education on households, future education reforms should focus on balancing the development of basic educational resources and quality across different regions, between urban and rural areas, and among families with varying socio-economic backgrounds. As the role of public schools in primary and secondary education becomes more central, further measures to improve educational equity—such as school admission quotas, multi-school zoning, and facilitating the mobility of high-quality teachers—will be crucial to improving the well-being of parents and students, curbing excessive competition, and fostering the comprehensive and healthy development of basic education in China.