Strategies for Improving the Quality of School Education under the Guidance of the "Double Reduction" Policy

Abstract

Background: China's "Double Reduction" policy shifts compulsory education reform from controlling excessive homework and off-campus tutoring to strengthening schools. The challenge is to improve learning without transferring hidden costs to teachers or families. Aims: This study synthesises policy and research evidence to identify the main barriers to school-quality improvement and to develop an operational framework linking classroom teaching, homework, after-school services, teacher support, evaluation, and collaborative governance. Methodology: A structured narrative review combined with policy-text analysis was conducted. Four national policy documents and 15 peer-reviewed studies published between 2021 and July 2026 were selected through targeted searches of official government pages, publisher platforms, DOI/Crossref-linked records, and reference tracking. Sources were screened for direct relevance to compulsory education, implementation mechanisms, learning quality, teacher work, family behaviour, or equity. Evidence was extracted and coded thematically. Results: Four recurring barriers are fragmented processes, weak adaptation to student differences, insufficient teacher capacity and time, and uneven resources. Implementation requires a cycle of classroom diagnosis, differentiated homework, curricularised after-school support, and feedback-based adjustment, enabled by workload protection, multidimensional evaluation, collaboration, and proportionate data governance. Conclusion: Sustainable quality improvement requires burden reduction and capacity building to be treated as one governance task. The framework translates policy principles into sequenced school actions and safeguards against workload transfer, superficial compliance, and inequality.