Research On Compulsory Education Equity In Loudi City

Since the beginning of the 21st century the economic gaps among different Chinese regions have been growing along with a general booming. The gaps are seen between the east and the west, between urban and rural areas, and even among counties or villages at the same administrative level.The regional gaps are especially evident in educational system as following:(1) Shortage of degree education in urban areas. During a rapid urbanization, millions of peasants and their children have been migrating into cities while supply of degree education has not been growing significantly there, leaving a high ratio of students to teachers. (2) As the population shrinks in rural areas, many schools are disappearing, leaving many children schoolless. (3) Some schools, compared with others from the same administrative district, can be at a disadvantaged position in terms of infrastructure, teachers’pay and quality of education.This consequently leads to parents’and teachers’preferences of schools, which further deepens the gaps.With the support of ArcGISlO software, we select the location entropy, the nearest distance model, spatial distribution and transportation accessibility for educational resources at the level of junior middle schools in Loudi City, Hunan Province, such as quantity of teachers, positional titles, school area etc. This paper does an econometric research on whether these resources have been allocated in a reasonable manner geographically and whether these resources have been fairly split between urban and rural areas.With the index of educational fairness, we come up with the causes of current allocation and advice of possible improvement, (such as the quantity of teachers, school area etc.)The research shows that(1) Junior middle schools are not allocated in a perfect manner with the existing population distribution. Economically developed counties are densely populated with education facilities lagging behind. Even within a single county there are significant differences in geographical term.(2) The distinct differences lie in the admission distance and significant opportunity.In some low-level economic development countrysides students spend more time going to school than others. Some administrative villages have no choice, while others are opposite.(3) The spatial allocation of educational resources is unbalanced. In general, students would choose to go to school far away but equipped with decent educational resources and these schools normally concentrate in cities or counties as regional centre, which consequently further deepens the imbalance between urban and rural areas.(4) Poor accessibility Traffic system of Loudi general does not help with this issue. And within Loudi City there is not so much difference in transport density. Students in all counties and villages spend a long time travelling to school.(5) The allocation of education resources should be inline with regional economic development. Supply and the demand on compulsory education should be especially balanced. Allocation on schools of compulsory education should be fine-tuned to defend educational equality. GIS spatial analysis in school configuration plays an important part in evaluating and projecting school allocation.