On September 1st, Beijing parent Fiona Fang sent a circle of friends excitedly: "New semester, new atmosphere! ‘ Double subtraction ’ After that, Beijing primary school students can arrive at school at 8: 10, which is about half an hour later than before. Don’t underestimate this half hour, it makes parents and children more calm in the morning and has an excellent experience! Small changes reflect a better life, and social progress is felt in this little experience. "
On July 24th, the general offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Reducing Students’ Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden in Compulsory Education (referred to as "Double Reduction Policy"), which clearly stated that it is necessary to comprehensively reduce the total amount and duration of homework, reduce students’ excessive workload, improve the after-school service level of schools, meet students’ diversified needs, and comprehensively regulate off-campus training behavior. Off-campus training institutions should not occupy national statutory holidays, rest days and summer and winter holidays to organize discipline training. Vigorously improve the quality of education and teaching to ensure that students learn well in school.
On the day before school starts, Beijing, where Fiona Fang is located, has drawn up a new schedule for primary and secondary school students in the city. The morning classes in primary schools are generally not earlier than 8:20, and those in middle schools are generally not earlier than 8:00.
The first new semester under the "double reduction" is not only in Beijing, but also in many parts of the country, where primary and secondary school students and their parents are given a "big gift" for starting school: the time for children to go to school in the morning is postponed, so they can sleep for a while; The time after school in the afternoon is also wrong, so parents don’t have to "skip work" to pick up their children; Children don’t have to do those mechanical repetitive homework, and they don’t have to stay up late at night; More and more children don’t have to sit in the training class on weekends to join the big stream of "involution" … …
This year’s new school year is really different from previous years.
However, the "double reduction" policy is not simply to adjust the school schedule, or even to reduce the burden on students. Its goal is to build a good educational ecology, and the ultimate goal is to build a high-quality education system. The policy of "double reduction" is a complex project related to all aspects of education, and many problems existing in current education have accumulated over the years. Obviously, education still faces many challenges in order to achieve the ultimate goal of the policy of "double reduction".
Can running all the way’s off-campus training really "stall"?
Over the years, off-campus training has become an important source of students’ burden in compulsory education.
"Every five years, we will do a study on the development of children in the country. As a result, children’s learning pressure is getting bigger and bigger." Sun Hongyan, director of the Children’s Research Institute of China Youth Research Center, said that the children who answered the questionnaire in 2005 were basically ‘ After 90 ’ In 2015, the children who answered the questionnaire were ‘ 00 ’ , "the results show that ‘ 00 ’ The time for extra-curricular tutoring on weekends is ‘ After 90 ’ Three times, in 2005, the time for children to make up lessons on weekends was 0.7 hours, and in 2015 it became 2.1 hours. "
Behind the multiplied study time is the multiplied training market scale.
At a press conference held by the Ministry of Education at the end of 2018, Lv Yugang, director of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, said that before the press conference, there were 400,000 off-campus training institutions in China, of which 273,000 had problems. The reporter of Zhongqingbao Zhongqingwang combed the official data of the Ministry of Education and found that there were 213,800 schools in compulsory education in the country that year. In other words, the total number of national training institutions has reached twice the total number of schools in compulsory education.
Behind the rapid expansion of off-campus training is the "wild dance" of capital.
"In 2013, I said to the founders of those training institutions, ‘ If you only rely on improving your grades, it is dangerous and there is no future ’ The answer of those people is: ‘ If we didn’t rely on improving our scores, there would be no present. ’” Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, said that capital pays more attention to the present.
Capital is wrapped in off-campus training institutions and institutions, countless children and parents, and it is gradually drifting away from the essence of education, which has become the pain of compulsory education.
Therefore, reducing the off-campus training burden of students in compulsory education stage is the top priority of this "double reduction".
The central government’s "double reduction" policy proposes to adhere to strict governance and comprehensively standardize off-campus training behavior. However, the "double reduction" policy of local editions has made more detailed arrangements for this. Taking Shanghai as an example, it requires strict examination and approval of training institutions, strict institutional investment and financing, strict limitation of training time, strengthened management of training content, strict management of institutional fees, strengthened management of employees, improved supervision of training institutions, no longer approving new off-campus training institutions for students in compulsory education, and re-examining and uniformly registering existing discipline training institutions as non-profit institutions with dual management; The original online discipline training institutions were changed to the examination and approval system, and the online discipline training institutions that had been filed were re-examined and approved according to the standards.
However, "tightening" blindly is not the most fundamental solution.
"Now it’s just the first domino, ‘ Double subtraction ’ It remains to be seen to what extent the policy can affect off-campus training. " Chu Zhaohui said.
In the opinion of experts, the reason why we should "wait and see" depends on whether the root cause of off-campus training still exists. "The root cause of training chaos is that the evaluation criteria of exams are too single and there is still imbalance between schools." Chu Zhaohui said.
In recent years, China has been reforming the examination and evaluation.
A few days ago, the Notice on Strengthening the Examination Management of Compulsory Education Schools issued by the Ministry of Education proposed that we should accurately grasp the examination function, greatly reduce the number of examinations, standardize the examination proposition management, rationally use the examination results, improve the evaluation of the learning process, strengthen the monitoring of academic quality, and improve the management and supervision mechanism. "The examinations in the compulsory education stage mainly play the functions of diagnosis and teaching, improving and strengthening teaching, and evaluating teaching quality. Except for the junior high school academic level examination, other examinations do not have the function of screening and selection." Lv Yugang, director of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, said that it is necessary to reasonably control the difficulty of the examination, and it is strictly forbidden to exceed the curriculum standard and the teaching progress.
However, experts believe that the reform is not strong enough.
"Many people think that our education evaluation is already being reformed. In fact, we only changed the exam." Chu Zhaohui said that the reform of education evaluation should include three levels: examination reform, enrollment reform and examination enrollment management system reform. However, the reform has remained at the examination level for many years, and the other two levels have not been involved too much.
Some experts believe that it is precisely because of this that there is a market for off-campus training that quickly improves scores by brushing questions. If a single evaluation standard still exists, it means that the "soil" of score-only theory still exists, which means that it is still a challenge to completely "stall" off-campus training in running all the way.
Can school education be emboldened from now on?
Governance outside the school, then what about the school?
First and foremost, it is also "reduction".
The central government’s "double reduction" policy clearly puts forward that it is necessary to reduce the total amount and duration of homework in an all-round way and reduce students’ excessive workload. Improve the operation management mechanism, rationally regulate the operation structure, classify and clarify the total amount of operation, improve the quality of operation design, and strengthen the guidance of operation completion. Students are not allowed to approve and correct their own homework. It is strictly forbidden to assign homework to parents or in disguised form. It is strictly forbidden to ask parents to check and correct homework.
Various localities have put forward more specific measures according to the local actual situation in the central "double reduction" policy. Shanghai proposes that it is strictly forbidden to conduct any form of unified examination and testing (including academic quality monitoring) for primary school grades one to three in the whole school district and the whole region; It is strictly forbidden to conduct district-wide unified examinations and tests for grades four to eight; If each district wants to monitor the academic quality, it should not be more than once every academic year, and it can only be monitored by random sampling, and the proportion of students randomly selected should not exceed 30% of this grade.
Zhejiang Province has put forward "five management" (primary and secondary school students’ homework, sleep, mobile phone, physique and reading materials management — — Reporter’s note) In order to grasp the hand, we will promote the burden reduction action with the focus on "reducing homework, increasing sleep, reducing tutoring, increasing exercise, reducing brushing problems and increasing practice".
Beijing proposed that the first grade of primary school should adhere to the "zero starting point" teaching, and schools should not organize any form of enrollment and placement examinations, and it is strictly forbidden to divide key classes and experimental classes; Improve the quality of classroom teaching and improve students’ learning efficiency at school.
In July, the Ministry of Education proposed to implement the "5+2" model of after-school service, that is, schools should provide after-school service five days a week, at least two hours a day, and students who have difficulties in picking up their children from their parents should provide delayed custody service. Many places all over the country have started the "upgraded version" of after-school service in the new semester.
Students have less homework, fewer exams, and all the students have returned to campus. What about after that?
"Reduction" is not the fundamental meaning of the "double reduction" policy, as Li Yi, deputy secretary of the Education Commission of Beijing Municipal Committee, said, "We should not only ‘ Controlling chaos, reducing burdens and preventing risks ’ , more ‘ Reform, transformation and promotion ’ 。”
When all the students return to campus, the challenge to school education has just begun.
A middle school youth league teacher described the scene before the introduction of the "double reduction" policy like this: "I am most afraid of organizing after-school activities. A basketball game is picked up by parents for a while and picked up by parents for a while, all of which are in extracurricular classes."
However, students and parents have good reasons.
"In recent years, I have never understood physics class at school. The teacher speaks at his own pace, and I can’t find a teacher without understanding it. Extracurricular classes are different. I have problems that I have done wrong. The teacher is more anxious than me. He always catches me and makes me correct my mistakes. " Wang Feng, a junior high school student in Beijing, said.
There are more and greater challenges for school teaching.
"If the quality of school teaching is not good, under the new demand, off-campus discipline training in compulsory education may still revive." Chu Zhaohui said.
Therefore, improving quality and increasing efficiency, fundamentally meeting students’ diversified educational needs, and ensuring that students learn well in school are the emboldened measures to retain students, so as to truly play the role of the main channel and position of the school. The key to increase this confidence is "whether the school education in the compulsory education stage can achieve high quality and balance, and whether the teaching quality and efficiency can be effectively improved." Chu Zhaohui said.
After the introduction of the "double reduction" policy, attempts have been made in various places to make educational resources more balanced and high-quality.
Li Wei introduced that starting from the new semester, Beijing will promote the rotation of cadres and teachers in a large area and in a large proportion. All principals and vice principals who have been away from retirement for more than 5 years and have served in the same school for 6 years should exchange jobs in principle; In principle, all teachers in public schools who have been away from retirement for more than 5 years and have worked in the same school for 6 years or more should be exchanged and rotated.
Li Baoping from Huiwen Middle School in Beijing is a senior backbone English teacher. Last year, she began to rotate to Chuiyangliu Campus in the group to be responsible for the teaching guidance of English groups in junior and senior high schools. She not only has to attend classes and evaluate classes, but also asks teachers around her to attend classes in her own classroom and provide demonstrations. After a year’s hard work, the English scores of the students in the branch school have improved significantly.
Facts have proved that when the rotation is normalized and institutionalized, it can indeed become an effective measure to balance the gap between schools.
However, some experts pointed out that there are still great challenges in the normalization and institutionalization of job rotation, and the biggest challenge is the difference between "strong schools", "weak schools", "quality schools" and "ordinary schools" that still exist in various places. "Now schools can be divided into three or six grades. As long as there is teacher rotation at this level, there will be resistance, and the greater the gap between schools, the greater the resistance will be." Chu Zhaohui said.
Can the parents of "Chicken Baby" completely "die"
After the off-campus training institutions have been managed and the students’ burden on campus has been reduced, can the parents of "Chicken Baby" lie flat?
"In the past, 90% of the children’s classes were making up classes. Of course, we also made up. If we don’t make up, we will fall behind." Ms. Li from Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, said that her children are now in Grade One. During the summer vacation, she enrolled her children in an online math class. After the introduction of the "double reduction" policy, Ms. Li said that she would "wait and see". "If everyone can’t make up, the children’s learning pressure is really great."
Many parents, like Ms. Li, keep a wait-and-see attitude: on the one hand, they are glad that the country has finally introduced policy governance to make their children more and more tired of off-campus training, on the other hand, they are also vaguely worried about whether schools alone can make their children stand out in the competition with others.
However, some parents are more "radical".
Chen Ran, a parent in Beijing, has a son who is in the third grade of primary school. Since the child was very young, Chen Ran has let him study in a famous English training institution. After the introduction of the "double reduction" policy, she sent such a message among parents: "Finally, there is no need to attend training classes, and children can have a happy childhood." Unexpectedly, some parents replied soon: "Xiaoming went to ordinary high school and Xiaohong went to vocational high school. Will they all have a bright future?" Don’t be silly, as long as the college entrance examination is still there, other people’s children can go to Tsinghua and Peking University, but your children can’t? "
As soon as such remarks came out, the original relaxed atmosphere in the group disappeared immediately, and some parents began to discuss how to "save classes".
This is the legendary theater effect. Watching a movie in the theater, the people in the front row stood up. Can the people in the back not stand up? As a result, everyone stood up and no one dared to sit down again.
Parents’ ideas need to be changed, and they should look at education from the perspective of children’s lifelong development, instead of focusing only on a knowledge point and an exam.
The central government’s "double reduction" policy also proposes to improve the cooperative mechanism between home and school. Further clarify the responsibility of home-school education, close communication between home and school, innovate collaborative methods, and promote the construction of collaborative education community. Education departments should, jointly with women’s federations and other departments, run parent schools or online family education guidance platforms, promote the construction of community family education guidance centers and service sites, guide parents to establish scientific parenting concepts, rationally determine children’s growth expectations, and strive to form a consensus on reducing burdens.
However, policy provisions alone are not enough. It is also necessary to truly establish confidence in the policy in the minds of parents. In fact, parents’ doubts are whether the policy can really be put in place. This requires all localities to decompose the "double reduction" policy into more details and formulate more targeted and perfect rules to reassure parents about the policy.
"While changing the concept of parents, the follow-up policies must keep up in time." Sun Hongyan said that after the "double reduction", there is still a difference between "what you want to do" and "what you can do". "It is said that children can exercise more, but where can they exercise? Where can children exercise scientifically and safely? These problems should be solved quickly. "
(At the request of the interviewee, both students and parents are pseudonyms.)
Zhongqingbao Zhongqingwang reporter Fan Weichen Intern Su Jingjing Source: China Youth Daily
