But her neighbor, Yaoyao, who is also in second grade, is still as busy as going to school. She attends the institution's recorded English classes every week, and her mother also signed her up for a math tutoring "private class" that she finally found.

During this summer vacation, Qiqi, a second-grade primary school student, lived a very relaxed life, and her daily routine was closely centered around the requirements of the school teachers. But her neighbor, Yaoyao, who is also in second grade, is still as busy as going to school. She attends the institution's recorded English classes every week, and her mother also signed her up for a math tutoring "private class" that she finally found.

"After ' double reduction ', there has been a differentiation among parents, and the overall anxiety has also eased, but there has been no fundamental change." Since the education "double reduction" policy was officially implemented in late July 2021, one year has passed Xue Haiping, dean of the Research Institute for Off-Campus Education for Primary and Secondary Students at Capital Normal University, commented on the changes in the past year.

Since 2005, Xue Haiping has been committed to the study of extracurricular tutoring. He is the author of "Research on Extracurricular Tutoring in Basic Education in my country", focusing on whether after-school tutoring is useful and the impact of after-school tutoring on "poor children". Based on the research conclusions, he has been calling for strengthening the supervision of after-school tutoring institutions for many years to ensure smooth class mobility.

In the "post-double reduction era", subject-based extracurricular tutoring institutions under capital operation no longer exist, and school education is also making positive changes. Is it feasible for parents to follow the previous " chicken baby " idea? Why is it that the "small town problem solver" who strives to achieve class counterattack has become the object of ridicule by some people? In response to the hot issues related to education this year, China Business News once again interviewed Xue Haiping and asked him to talk about his changes and thoughts after the release of the "double reduction" policy.

Research on the transformation of "Dong Yuhui"

China Business News: Judging from your research and observation, one year after the "double reduction" policy was introduced, are parents still as "chicken-blooded" and anxious as before?

Xue Haiping: The "double reduction" policy mentioned that the financial burden on students and parents should be effectively reduced within one year. Through the rectification of off-campus training institutions and the introduction of after-school services by schools, we can see that the number of students participating in off-campus training is declining compared with before, and the overall anxiety of parents has also been alleviated, but there has been no fundamental change yet, and " After the "double reduction", divisions emerged among parents. The "chicken baby" phenomenon still exists among the middle and upper classes in the city. Some of them will find ways to avoid supervision and go to group classes or find private tutors to continue making up lessons.

Why do parents still feel anxious? There are three main reasons. First, it is true that the current high school entrance examination and college entrance examination have a screening effect, mainly based on scores. However, the difficulty of the high school entrance examinations in many provinces and cities this year is being reduced, which is a guide to tell parents that selection does not rely on Olympiads, partial questions, difficult questions, and super-outline questions, and to reduce the test-taking value of off-campus training. Second, parents have inertia in their educational thinking. Many people are still stuck in the "chicken baby" thinking before the "double reduction", and they need to change slowly as the surrounding environment changes. Judging from this year, both education and training institutions and school education have changed greatly, but the changes in family education have been relatively small. Of course, it is also more difficult to change. Third, the impact of the epidemic. In the first half of the year, Beijing, Shanghai and other places had no online classes for several months. Parents had to work from home while also worrying about the effectiveness of their children's online classes, which naturally increased their anxiety.

China Business News: What other research related to “double reduction” are you and your team currently doing?

Xue Haiping: Everyone is concerned about the "double reduction" of , and research in this area must continue, so Capital Normal University established the Primary and Secondary School Students Off-Campus Education Research Institute in June this year, commissioned by the Off-Campus Education and Training Supervision Department of the Ministry of Education We did some research. For example, regarding the regulation and governance of non-disciplinary training, parents now generally report that the prices of some non-disciplinary training have taken the opportunity to increase after the "double reduction", and some institutions have experienced a break in the capital chain and "run away". These issues need to be addressed Standardize and resolve through policies. Nowadays, the live broadcast of New Oriental is very popular. Many people are "fans" of Dong Yuhui. They have indeed done a good job. We will also study the transformation of education and training institutions, as well as the difficulties and problems encountered.

Many "chicken-blood" parents say that they actually don't want to be "chicken babies" at all, but they have to be passively involved because of the powerful " theater effect ".My master's student Xu Dancheng did a study on "Children from Other People's Homes". This study is very interesting and specifically talks about the influence of class peers, school peers, and neighbors on the "theater effect". It was found that the "theater effect" does not only occur in middle-class families as everyone thinks, but has a greater impact on families with relatively low socioeconomic status and rural students. The reason is very simple. Parents in the advantaged class have the opportunity to obtain more comprehensive educational information, and their investment in off-campus training is relatively rational. Families with lower socioeconomic status hope to achieve a class jump by investing in their children’s education, and are more susceptible to external influences. Factors interfere, and "chicken baby" behavior appears. Does

supplementary lessons have any effect? It will be clearer in the future

China Business News: In your book "Research on Extracurricular Tutoring in Basic Education in my country", you specifically studied "whether extracurricular tutoring is useful" that parents are very concerned about, but no clear conclusion was drawn at that time. . Nowadays, there are very few large-scale extracurricular tutoring. If we compare the admission data after the "double reduction" with the previous ones, will we draw a final conclusion in the future?

Xue Haiping: At present, domestic tracking studies on the long-term impact of on academic performance are very rare. Academic empirical studies did not give convincing answers in the end, and there was no consistent conclusion. Therefore, it is difficult to simply give parents a very Looking forward to a "useful" or "useless" answer.

One of my research results is that in the compulsory education stage, extracurricular tutoring has a positive impact on mathematics and English, but has little impact on Chinese performance. In the investigation of the relationship between extracurricular tutoring and college entrance examination results, 77.8% of high school students who did not participate in extracurricular tutoring entered university, and 88.4% of high school students who participated in extracurricular tutoring entered university. Their undergraduate rates were 55.4% and 57.4% respectively. . In other words, although the proportion of high school students who participate in extracurricular tutoring is higher than that of high school students who do not participate in extracurricular tutoring, the difference between them is not large.

After the "double reduction", there are no more large-scale extracurricular tutoring institutions. Comparing the new research data with the previous ones, will the conclusions drawn be clearer? Everyone is very concerned about this issue, and we are also doing research in this area. However, because the policy has only been implemented for one year, the relevant survey data is still being collected. It may take several years of data accumulation to draw a final and clear conclusion.

China Business News: When the "double reduction" policy was first introduced last year, many people still held a wait-and-see attitude, thinking that the burden would be further reduced like in South Korea, and private tutoring would become more severe, and in the end the government had to give up. Based on the situation this year, do you think this phenomenon will appear in China?

Xue Haiping: should be said this way. Training institutions have capital to operate like before, and everyone is very anxious. The phenomenon of public make-up classes is decreasing. Of course, the phenomenon of private tutoring that does not comply with the "double reduction" policy still exists, but how large is this situation? There is no authoritative data at this time. As for whether the government will give up the "double reduction" policy, I don't think so, because our country has proposed "burden reduction" since the 1950s. At most, the existing policy may be improved over time and the educational environment changes. , adjustment, this is also normal and reasonable.

"Becoming a question writer in a small town" should not be laughed at

China Business News: The topic of "being a question writer in a small town" has attracted more attention in the past two years. Some time ago, Yi Yang Qianxi fell into the whirlpool of public opinion compiled by the National Theater. Some commentators called out for him and ridiculed that "a topic writer in a small town" was not qualified; when there were state-owned enterprise employees in Jiangxi showing off their wealth and family social connections in their circle of friends, some commented There is a lot of ridicule for "small town problem solvers". Why are young people working hard on their own but being ridiculed in the eyes of some people? What do you think of the phenomenon of "being a problem maker in a small town"?

Xue Haiping: Over the years, I have also continued to pay attention to the phenomenon of "being a question writer in a small town". What "being a question writer in a small town" actually reflects is that children from lower-class families in rural areas and towns finally get into good universities through hard work and achieve success. Upward class mobility. This phenomenon has existed in our country for a long time in the past few decades, and it is also a manifestation of social fairness.Among the employees of state-owned enterprises exposed on the Internet showing off their wealth, it can be seen that the advantaged class relies on their class advantages to give their children an advantage in opportunities such as further education and employment. Therefore, the country must break this class stereotype, including regulating after-school tutoring and training institutions. The same is true for remediation. Because when we study extracurricular tutoring, we find that it has become a means of class consolidation, but it is more hidden, and before the "double reduction", it was still done under the guise of legality.

In this case, I think the emergence of "small town problem solvers" is of positive significance. Some outstanding scientists in our country may be "small town problem solvers", but no one talked about it in the past few decades. Some domestic studies have found that there are not as many rural students in key universities as before. In recent years, the country has also introduced many preferential enrollment policies for students in rural areas. Peking University , Tsinghua and many other universities have enrollment quotas in rural areas. Deliver. The state is still supporting the development of middle schools in county towns, and also wants to change the "collapse of counties" and break the factors that hinder class mobility, because many rural children go to middle schools in county towns, and their families do not have the financial conditions to allow them to go to cities where the teaching quality is better.

Of course, we have also seen that the influence of the growth environment and education level will bring some restrictions to "being a problem solver in a small town". For example, it is more biased towards grades, personal abilities are not fully developed, and the innovation ability of some people is also incompatible with the national level. There is a bit of mismatch in requirements, these are objective realities. But in many cases, it can also be improved through higher education. "Being a problem solver in a small town" is not as pessimistic as some people think. After all, there are only a minority of people with "high scores and low abilities". Take me for example. When I was in junior high school in a rural area, many abilities, such as interpersonal communication and communication skills, were not developed at that time. However, when I went to university and later studied for a master's degree and a doctorate, I deliberately made up for it and improved it. I thought that compared with before, There are still big changes.

As for those voices that ridicule "small town problem solvers", I don't think they are the views of the majority of people. The vast majority of people support their efforts and progress, but the voices of a small number of people are amplified through the Internet.

China Business News: In the "post-double reduction era", in what aspects should education be reformed to adapt to the future development of the country? How should parents adjust their thinking? In particular, many parents born in the 1970s and 1980s came to big cities through the college entrance examination. Will it be difficult for them to break the "score-only theory"?

Xue Haiping: The "double reduction" goal of is ultimately based on the comprehensive development of students' physical and mental development. The talents trained by future education should be developed in a differentiated manner, each with their own specialties and able to adapt to the needs of different positions. For example, some education trains people engaged in technical work, some educates scientists, and some educates thinkers. In short, education should be diverse, rather than using one score to uniformly measure all talent standards. Before the "double reduction", probably the vast majority of schools and parents were pursuing one goal: performance. But this obviously cannot meet social needs, so education needs to be reformed.

I quite agree with your analysis of parents' mentality. Indeed, many parents will strengthen their belief in "focusing on grades" because of their own experience, believing that this can help their children be in a favorable position in the competition. But in the era that children are now facing, many things have changed, and the country’s demand for talents is also different. Parents must see this to truly help their children go further. A research conclusion I talked about in "Research on Extracurricular Tutoring in Basic Education in my country" needs special attention from parents who are still "chicken babies", that is, "the scores raised by extracurricular tutoring will stifle children's rest, health and at the expense of creativity”.

The problem is that many parents are not aware of these costs and have no motivation to change their way of thinking. They still follow the old path and find ways to continue to find opportunities to make up lessons for their children. They feel that it is more practical to score more points. If they really see what kind of talents the future society will need, they will find that spending so much money and energy to continue to be "chicken babies" in extracurricular tutoring institutions is largely not worth the gain.

"Research on Extracurricular Tutoring in Basic Education in my country"

Written by Xue Haiping

Science Press January 2021 Edition