The Impact of the Double Reduction Policy on the Academic Performance of Middle School Students

In the past decade or so, Chinese primary and secondary school students generally face tremendous academic pressure such as a variety of extracurricular training, heavy homework, and a variety of exams. According to Ren et al. (2016), primary and secondary school students in China need to spend more than three hours a day on homework and tuition in addition to seven to eight hours of classes. This is because when students finish the nine-year compulsory education level students need to enter different levels of high schools based on their final exam results (Xue and Makela, 2024). These problems seriously hinder the overall development and physical and mental health of primary and secondary school students. Therefore, in July 2021, China's Central Office issued the ‘Double Reduction’ policy, which aims to reduce the burden of homework and extracurricular tutoring for primary and secondary school students in China's compulsory education. It aims to reduce the burden of homework and extracurricular tutoring for primary and secondary school students in China's compulsory education, by reducing the amount of homework they have to do, and by reducing the variety of tutorials and home-school co-operation to address the heavy burden of schoolwork and stress on students. This reform has very important implications for the education sector in China. The policy will not only affect the education sector but also its related businesses. However, the impact of the ‘double reduction’ policy on students' performance is a major theoretical topic, and its objective impact needs to be analysed through rigorous empirical research.