Research on the Construction of Evaluation Criteria for Balanced Development of Compulsory Education Policy in China

Educational policy evaluation is a factual and valuable judgment of the educational policy process and its effects, and educational policy evaluation criteria determine the direction and effects of educational policy evaluation. At present, there is a lack of research results on the evaluation of education policies based on OECD/DAC evaluation criteria in China, and the construction of theories on the evaluation of education policies is still weak. Most scholars are limited to analyzing basic education data released by the OECD or focusing on basic theoretical research on education policy evaluation. This study adopts qualitative research and collects data through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, consults experts in relevant educational institutions and other fields many times, takes into account China’s regional differences and the reality of educational development, and adopts the OECD/DAC evaluation criteria that are widely recognized in the international arena, in combination with the “Measures for Supervisory and Evaluation of Quality and Balanced Development of Compulsory Education in County Areas” of the Ministry of Education of China, and constructs a scientifically reasonable evaluation criteria system of the policy of balanced development of compulsory education in counties in China. The results show that five groups of people, including government officials, school teachers, students’ parents, experts, and social stakeholders, have a high degree of acceptance of the evaluation criteria and believe that the four criteria of effectiveness and relevance, coherence, and impact in the OECD/DAC evaluation criteria are the core criteria for evaluating China’s policy of balanced development of compulsory education (referred to as BDCE). The results of this study show that the evaluation criteria system is suitable for evaluating the BDCE policy in China, and provides a useful reference for the evaluation of the BDCE policy in China.