Research On The Effect Of The Burden Reduction Policy For Junior High School Teachers

China’s primary and secondary school teachers have long faced the plight of overburdened teachers,and in the past,the focus of burden-reduction policies has always been on the student population and less on the teacher population.The Notice on Addressing the Outstanding Problem of Formalism to Reduce the Burden for the Grassroots clearly proposes 2019 as the year of reducing the burden for the grassroots,and the problem of overburdened teachers,as a concrete manifestation of formalism and bureaucracy in the field of education,begins to be put on the government’s agenda.The goal of teacher construction in the new era is to create a high-quality professional and innovative teaching force,a goal that requires teachers to continuously improve their professional quality,but the excessive workload has seriously hindered their professional development.In this context,in December 2019,the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued "Several Opinions on Reducing the Burden of Primary and Secondary School Teachers to Further Create a Good Environment for Education and Teaching"(hereinafter referred to as "Opinions").The Opinions propose to effectively reduce teachers’ burdens from the source,return time and space for teachers to teach and develop professionally,and require provinces to set out a list of specific burden reductions and make solid progress in reducing teachers’ burdens.Under the guidance of the central-level teacher burden reduction policy,provinces and municipalities have issued local teacher burden reduction lists.Currently,31 provincial governments across the country have issued local teacher load-reduction lists.The Sichuan Provincial Leading Group for Education issued the Sichuan Primary and Secondary School Teachers’ Burden Reduction Checklist in September 2020 to guide the province’s party committees,governments and relevant departments at all levels in their efforts to reduce teachers’ burdens.Since then,Sichuan Province has promoted the implementation of teacher load reduction in cities and counties by updating typical cases of teacher load reduction at the prefecture level on government websites in real time through dynamic briefings.In terms of the life cycle of the policy,the teacher load reduction policy is in its initial implementation stage,and most studies of the policy are based on policy tools or value analysis,and there is a lack of empirical research on the effects of the policy.Therefore,a case study of the effects of teacher load-reduction policies can both understand the implementation of the policies and provide some practical basis for local policy makers to adjust and optimize the policies.The problem of overburdened middle school teachers is particularly evident among teachers of different levels,and with the introduction of the "Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Homework and Off-Campus Training for Students in Compulsory Education" in July 2021,middle school teachers are facing a new burden-the burden of after-school services.In addition,although the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Vocational Education(2022 Revision)has changed "the separation of general education and vocational education" to "the coordinated development of general education and vocational education",the ratio of general education and vocational education enrollment in the secondary school entrance examination in X city of Sichuan Province has been close to 1:1 in the past two years,and in order to ensure the promotion rate,junior high school The result is that teachers are still overburdened with the burden of further education.These changes in the policy environment and the synergistic relationships among policies affect the effects of teacher burden reduction policies.Therefore,this study uses middle school teachers as the research object,compares the policy results with the policy goals using the before-and-after comparison method and the target group assessment method,and then determines the effects of teacher burden reduction policies and their influencing factors,and proposes suggestions to improve the effects of the policies.As the target group of the burden reduction policy,teachers’ subjective perceptions of the changes in their own burdens reflected the effectiveness of the policy implementation.In this study,questionnaires and interviews with administrators and junior high school teachers in the case schools revealed that the implementation of the load reduction policy did not fully achieve the policy goals,mainly in the following ways:in terms of supervision and inspection,the load reduction policy had little effect in controlling the total amount and frequency;in terms of social affairs,the load reduction policy did not limit the number of special tasks that teachers participated in;in terms of filling out reports,the load reduction policy failed to In terms of social affairs,the policy did not limit the number of special tasks teachers could attend;in terms of filling out reports,the policy did not reduce the content and number of reports filled out;in terms of secondment,the number of hours and times teachers were secondment per school year decreased.Based on the investigation of policy implementation effects,this study concluded that there were three main factors that affected the effects of the policy on reducing teachers’ burdens: first,the lack of a policy environment that supported the full effectiveness of the policy,mainly in terms of the lack of synergistic effects among education policies and the lack of social opinion that understood and supported teachers’ burden reduction;second,the lack of precision in policy formulation,mainly in terms of narrow policy goals,vague policy discourse,and insufficient expression of public interests.Third,there are deviations in policy implementation,mainly in the form of insufficient policy publicity,conflict of interest among policy implementation bodies,and lack of clear monitoring and accountability mechanisms.In view of the above findings,this study proposes suggestions to enhance the effectiveness of the policy: first,in improving the policy environment,optimizing the layout of the policy system and forming a synergy to reduce teachers’ burden;second,in the process of policy formulation,paying attention to the expression of public opinion and improving the policy text;third,in the process of policy implementation,increasing the publicity of the policy and improving the long-term mechanism for reducing teachers’ burden.