Ministry of Education： China’s compulsory education quality monitoring pays attention to students’ all-round development
BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua)-The Report on the Quality Monitoring of Compulsory Education in China has been officially released recently by the Quality Monitoring Center of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education (hereinafter referred to as the Monitoring Center). The monitoring center interprets this, saying that China not only regards Chinese, mathematics and science as the important subjects of national compulsory education quality monitoring, but also brings moral education, physical education and art into the monitoring field, which covers a wide range of disciplines, highlighting the importance of China’s monitoring for students’ all-round development.
The following is the explanation of the monitoring center for the relevant situation and main characteristics of monitoring work:
First, based on the national conditions of China, according to the curriculum standards to develop indicators and tools.
Curriculum standards are the basic norms and quality requirements of the state for basic education courses, which reflect the basic requirements of the state for students at different stages in knowledge and skills, processes and methods, emotional attitudes and values. Different from international large-scale education evaluation projects, the quality monitoring of compulsory education in China is strictly based on the national curriculum standards, and the monitoring index system and tools fully reflect the basic requirements of the national curriculum standards. The results can help us understand the learning situation of Chinese students, and then accurately grasp the implementation and implementation of the national curriculum standards.
In addition to strictly following the national curriculum standards, in the process of developing monitoring standards and tools, China’s monitoring system also systematically analyzed the relevant laws, regulations and policy requirements, went deep into the front line of education to conduct extensive research, and conducted several trial tests before the formal monitoring, so as to ensure that the monitoring indicators and tools are in line with the actual education and teaching, have wide applicability, and can comprehensively and accurately evaluate the development status of students in compulsory education in China.
Second, advocate the educational concept of all-round development and highlight the ability orientation.
Promoting the all-round development of students’ morality, intelligence, physique and beauty is an important goal and requirement of basic education in China. China not only regards Chinese, mathematics and science as the important subjects of national compulsory education quality monitoring, but also brings moral education, physical education and art into the monitoring field, which covers a wide range of subjects, highlighting the importance of China’s monitoring on students’ all-round development. At the same time, China’s monitoring adheres to the ability orientation, focusing on the test of students’ comprehensive application of knowledge and problem-solving ability, gradually guiding the whole society and the education system to optimize the training program, and devoting itself to the cultivation and promotion of students’ multi-level ability. In all disciplines and fields, tests based on real life situations are emphasized; In the monitoring of sports and art, the test of performance ability such as sports, singing and painting is emphasized.
Third, pay attention to the monitoring of key related factors of education quality, and identify the focus of quality improvement.
The quality monitoring of compulsory education in China not only pays attention to the quality of compulsory education, but also analyzes the key factors affecting the quality of compulsory education. In the process of demonstrating and selecting the indicators related to the quality of compulsory education, we should sort out and analyze the relevant educational policies of the Party and the state, comprehensively consult and systematically analyze the latest research progress, seriously study the hot and difficult issues and outstanding problems in China’s education, and focus on curriculum setting, condition guarantee, teacher allocation, subject teaching and school management in six monitoring disciplines, so as to provide a focus for improving education and quality.
Taking scientific monitoring as an example, in addition to evaluating students’ scientific academic performance, we also investigated the curriculum, homework time, teachers’ academic qualifications, inquiry-based teaching behavior, and the use of educational and teaching resources, in order to find out the key factors that may affect students’ academic performance and provide more targeted and effective guidance and reference for education and teaching. For example, the correlation analysis shows that teachers’ inquiry teaching level is closely related to students’ scientific academic performance. Taking the fourth grade as an example, compared with teachers with low inquiry teaching level, the proportion of students with high inquiry teaching level who have reached the intermediate and above level is 9.7 percentage points higher, and the proportion of students who have reached the excellent level is 12.7 percentage points higher. The same rule also exists in physics, biology and geography in the eighth grade.
Four, bring together high-level talents from many disciplines and fields to participate in the monitoring work.
By building an open platform, the monitoring center has effectively integrated resources and strengths in related fields at home and abroad, providing important talent guarantee and intellectual support for the quality monitoring of national compulsory education. In 2015— During the first cycle of monitoring in 2017, more than 1,000 experts in education measurement and evaluation, curriculum and teaching theory, education policy and other fields, as well as local education administration experts, teaching researchers, primary and secondary school principals and front-line teachers were invited to participate in the selection of monitoring indicators in related disciplines and the research and development of monitoring tools; A team of more than 500 monitoring guides was selected and set up nationwide to participate in the supervision and guidance of monitoring implementation; More than 40 overseas experts from 20 countries, regions and international organizations were invited to provide technical consultation and professional services for monitoring. By bringing together experts from many disciplines and fields, the professionalism and sustainable development of monitoring are effectively guaranteed.
Five, the use of advanced measurement technology and information means, combined with the actual monitoring to be innovative.
In the design of monitoring tools, considering the extensiveness of test content and the limited time for students to answer, and in order to prevent cheating, matrix sampling design is adopted, and multiple-question books are used in the same subject; In order to solve the comparability of students’ academic performance in different years, the test equivalence technology is adopted to measure students’ academic performance in different years on the same ruler, so that students’ academic performance in different years can be compared and longitudinal tracking analysis of students’ academic performance can be realized. In the monitoring sampling work, combined with the actual situation in China, the "school-student" two-stage sampling method widely used in international education quality monitoring is changed to the "district-county-school-student" three-stage sampling method, which can not only fully grasp the situation of the whole country and provinces, but also greatly improve the monitoring operability. On the technical means of monitoring, the electronic singing system is used to test the students’ singing ability. During the test, students sang songs on the spot and uploaded them to the test system in real time. Based on the artificial intelligence scoring system, the automatic scoring of students’ singing ability was realized, which solved the problem of data collection and scoring in large-scale singing ability test.
Six, build a strict and standardized data collection process, strengthen the supervision and management of the implementation process.
Objective and true data is the "lifeline" of the whole monitoring work. The national compulsory education quality monitoring has formulated a strict and standardized data collection workflow and a minute-long work schedule, and defined the sequence, specific requirements and time nodes of each work to ensure that the data collection work is standardized and orderly. The monitoring implementation progress management system is adopted to monitor and guide the implementation process of monitoring organizations in provinces, counties and schools in real time, and collect and follow up information at different levels, which effectively improves the management efficiency and quality of monitoring organization implementation. At the same time, organize visual experts to conduct special supervision and inspection on the monitoring preparations in some provinces in China, and urge and guide local governments to do a good job in monitoring preparations; The teachers of the non-sample school serve as testers, who are responsible for supervising the whole process and patrolling the test work; Half an hour before the start of the test, unpack the monitoring toolkit and the confidential student roster, publish the student list in the monitoring bulletin board and accept supervision; During the test, we can guide and monitor the test in real time through QQ group, WeChat group and hotline. Through the above measures, the data collection work is standardized, orderly and efficient, and the objectivity and truth of monitoring data are effectively guaranteed.
Seven, innovative application of results, to help educational decision-making and improvement of education and teaching.
Monitoring is only a means, and improving and upgrading the quality of education is the purpose. Based on the monitoring data, the monitoring center has written different results reports and submitted them to the relevant national education departments, which provides an important reference for educational decision-making. At the same time, the monitoring center also provides monitoring results reports to all participating provinces and sample counties (cities, districts) every year, and organizes interpretation meetings of monitoring results reports to help local personnel understand the monitoring data results and promote the application of monitoring results. For example, in September 2017, the monitoring center held a provincial monitoring result report interpretation meeting in sub-districts across the country, and 32 provincial units and all their sample counties participated in the interpretation meeting. In addition, it also provides professional support for some districts and counties to carry out improvement work based on monitoring results.