Author(s)

Yuheng Zhou

Chengdu Foreign Language School, Chengdu, China.

County-level high schools provide education to over half of China’s high school students and are important pivots in bridging rural and urban China and allowing rural students to access higher education. In recent years, however, county-level high schools have been plagued by a collection of issues like student outflow, leading to deteriorating educational outcomes and public credibility, significantly undermining educational equality and the rural revitalization scheme. This phenomenon is called the county-level high school dilemma. Through analysis of a local county-level high school located in Heqing County, Yunnan Province, the present paper finds that the county-level high school dilemma is a combined result of student outflow, teaching quality deterioration, test-driven education, etc. The present paper provides an overview of the county-level high school dilemma and its background and explores its causes and policy implications to tackle the dilemma.

County-Level High School, Rural Education, Rural Revitalization, Equality, Gaokao

Zhou, Y. (2023) Towards Equality and Revitalization: Breaking the Dilemma of China’s County-Level High Schools. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 11, 233-248. doi: 10.4236/jss.2023.1111015.