Introduction

Testing has a significant influence on national policy-making as well as day-to-day school life because it provides a global standard to measure and regulate education accountability within and across nationals (Lingard et al., 2013). Students are trained to succeed in standardised assessment, which can presumably improve countries’ human capital to meet the challenges and opportunities of globalisation (Auld & Morris, 2016; Baek, 2019; Ball, 2009; Lingard et al., 2013; Wang, 2014; Yamato & Zhang, 2017). According to their performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment, Eastern and Western countries adjust their national policies to achieve competitive school systems (Auld & Morris, 2016; Baird et al., 2016). However, this can result in a highly competitive culture in schools, affecting students’ learning experience and well-being (Baek, 2019; Zhao et al., 2015). Researchers, the government, and the public increasingly acknowledge the need to lighten the academic burden on primary and secondary students in East Asian countries (China, Japan, and South Korea) (Baek, 2019; Kai, 2014; Li & Li, 2010; Ninomiya, 2016; Zhao et al., 2015). According to Zhao et al., (2015), Chinese scholars and educators are concerned that high academic pressure has nurtured students with good scores but caused their poor well-being.

Problematisation of academic burden

The academic burden has been recognised as one of the “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 155) over the years. Rittel & Webber (1973) described “wicked problems” as dilemmas and said confronting these problems is bound to fail because of their nature. In this instance, the dilemma is about the lightening of the academic burden in an exam-oriented society. Lightening the academic burden entails a debate between the government’s ‘economic goal of education’ (Chapman, 2015, p. 146) and a personalised value of quality of life. If attention is given to preparing human capital for the labour market, standardised assessment and performance will become prominent, causing neglect of students’ physical and mental health (Chapman, 2015), and, subsequently, their low well-being (Zhang, 2016; Zhao et al., 2015). For example, over 60% of Chinese children aged 6–17 have reported having less than eight hours of sleep per night, mainly because of academic pressure (Xu & Hu, 2020). With more time spent sitting and studying, the rate of myopia among Chinese children increased to 53.6% in 2018 (Xu & Hu, 2020). In the same year, four government departments jointly issued a guideline on reducing the extracurricular burden on primary and middle school students by regulating the development of after-school tutoring institutions (Xie & Li, 2019; Zou, 2019). This specifically brought about changes in exam-oriented training that had caused students’ extracurricular burden and family economic burden (Xie & Li, 2019, p. 96). However, many parents continued to invest in after-school tutoring because students’ exam performance still is a major indicator of their future development (Zhang & Bray, 2018). Therefore, lightening the academic burden in an exam-oriented society is a dilemma as it reflects contradictions in the values perceived by different stakeholders.

There is a dearth of literature on the inconsistency between the espoused values in policies and social practices. Such an inconsistency would contribute to the difficulty in resolving the dilemma mentioned above. Therefore, analysing how the problem of academic burden is framed in policies and how policies attempt to solve it is needed through the identification of the values endorsed by policies and embraced by families. For instance, resistance to alleviating academic burden comes from the debates on the meaning of well-being in the Chinese context (Zhang, 2016), as perceived differently by Chinese policymakers, educators, parents, and students. Some stakeholders aim to improve students’ experiences at specific points of time while others only focus on students’ development over an extended period of time. If one views well-being as the end goal of life, they may achieve this goal in the long term based on the advantage of the students’ ‘later becoming economically successful’ (Chapman, 2015). In this case, the academic burden is more likely to be ignored when well-being becomes the long-term goal. Conversely, if one views well-being as a means of personal development, the academic burden is problematic as it affects the quality of students’ lives (Chapman, 2015).

Defining academic burden

In this research, the decision to use the terms ‘academic burden’ and ‘academic burden reduction’ was underpinned by previous studies and research. Originally in Chinese policies, jianfu, meaning ‘reducing burden’, is used to suggest a need for lightening students’ burden because they are overloaded by schoolwork and after-school activities. However, there is variation in the use of jianfu in English literature. For example, Li & Li (2010) use ‘academic pressure’ when reporting the resistance from schools and parents that impedes this educational change. Similarly, Zhao et al., (2015) use ‘academic stress’ to problematise the highly competitive school culture. Moreover, in other studies, this issue is referred to as ‘educational stress’ (Sun et al., 2011, 2013). Still, ‘academic stress’, ‘educational stress’, or ‘academic pressure’ cannot specifically address the harmful influence on students’ well-being, because stress or pressure also benefits students to stay focused while studying (Sang et al., 2017). Therefore, the researchers chose to use ‘academic burden’ in this study to discuss the negative effects of academic stress.

Chinese contexts

Regarding the problematisation of academic burden and its reflection on educational policies, China provides an interesting case. The academic burden is contextualised as a product of globalisation and neoliberalism in the contemporary Chinese education system. First, globalisation highlights the imperatives of knowledge and power in all countries (Stromquist, 2002). In China, two significant challenges occurred: (1) expanding the accessibility of basic education and (2) improving the overall quality of education (Liu & Fang, 2009). However, the second challenge bears the unintended consequence of the improvement in exam-oriented education (Lingard et al., 2013; Wang, 2016). Therefore, students are led towards exam-oriented education, where education policies continue to stress the benefits of standardised testing driven by the values of system efficiency (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). In this sense, students are burdened by their own country’s imperative of building a knowledge society.

Second, neoliberalism exacerbates inequality in the distribution of educational resources (Ball, 2009). Neoliberalism proposes that “each individual is held responsible and accountable for their actions and well-being” (Harvey, 2005, p. 65). As everyone is expected to be “entrepreneurs of themselves” (p. 9), underneath the surface, an increasing number of people are experiencing what Han (2015) calls the ‘burnout society’, in which traditional forms of a disciplinary society have withered away and have been masked by achievement. In China, the thriving phenomenon of the after-school tutoring business proves that excessive educational competitiveness has changed students’ being and doing (Zhang & Bray, 2016).

Furthermore, a serious conflict exists between the centralisation and decentralisation of educational policies and resources in China. On the one hand, there is a trend to support and underline the centralisation of power with reference to national productivity and efficiency in testing outcomes and measurable standards as the national priority, which every student and teacher needs to achieve (Chapman, 2015; Stromquist, 2002; Zhang & Bray, 2016). On the other hand, catering to individual well-being requires decentralised attention, such as allocation and utilisation of educational resources to satisfy individual needs (Stromquist, 2002). The tension between centralisation and decentralisation has implications in various areas such as curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, school choice, class setting, and class size in China (Xie & Li, 2019).

The aim of this research

The purpose of this research is to identify the discursive formation of policy problems (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Specifically, this study aims to identify problems involved in the academic burden and analyse the causes of academic burden constructed by policies—in this study the ones issued by the Ministry of Education (MOE) will be investigated—because policies aim to address particular problems by documenting the objectives and solutions (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). The research questions for this study were underpinned by Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) ideas and the overarching one is identified as below.

  • How have recent MOE policies relating to the academic burden constructed in the attempt to solve the problem?

This research question can be broken down into three research sub-questions as below.

  • How do policies frame or construct the problem of academic burden?

  • To which ‘problem’ of academic burden is each policy constructed as a solution?

  • Will the policies constructed in that way ‘solve’ the problem of academic burden?

This research aimed to approach policies as a process of problematisation in a particular context (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). This article has been divided into six sections. Following this introduction, the second section focuses on explaining the theoretical framework of this study. The third section is concerned with the methods. The fourth section analyses the data gathered and addresses each of the research questions in turn. The fifth section discusses the findings with reference to the Chinese educational values and educational equity. The final section includes a discussion of the implication of the findings for future research.

Theoretical framework

The education policy analysis in this research study is underpinned by the poststructuralism paradigm, drawing on Bacchi’s theory of the construction of policy problems (Bacchi, 2009, 2010; Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). Informed by a Foucauldian poststructuralist perspective, Bacchi (2016) argues that ‘problems’ do not exist naturally. Instead, they are constructed as ‘problems’ within policies and policy proposals (Bacchi, 2016). Therefore, by exploring how a ‘problem’ is constructed within policies and policy proposals, researchers identify the governmentality behind how a ‘problem’ is problematised, the premises of this problematisation, and its effects (Bacchi, 2016).

Problematising policies: interrogating policy discourse

Figure 1 illustrates the theoretical framework of this study. In the policy-as-discourse theory, both problems and solutions are created (Bacchi, 2010). As the goal of policies is to propose solutions to existing problems, in this research, the analysis “works backwards” (p. 17) from reading the solutions to interpreting the problem representations, which is the so-called ‘What’s the problem presented to be? (the WPR approach)’ (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016). In this study, the WPR approach is used to answer the question ‘What are the problem representations in educational policies relating to the reduction of academic burden?’ In doing so, the researchers hope to understand (1) how policies are construct or academic burden is framed and (2) what the contributing causes of academic burden are (research sub-questions 1 and 2).

Fig. 1
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Problematising policies

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Following the work of Bacchi (2009; 2016), we also try to understand other questions that she proposes: Can the ‘problem’ be thought about differently? How can this representation of problems be questioned, disputed, and disrupted? From this perspective, we use Root Cause Analysis (RCA) (Preuss, 2013) to analyse different levels of causes, identifying the most fundamental reason(s) for the problem’s existence, which might not be consistent with the policy representation. RCA originated in the healthcare field, and Preuss (2013) applies RCA to education investigation, aiming to find the most fundamental causes of problems in the field. This theory is intended to clarify the underlying cause of a specific problem or symptom so that it can prevent the problem from reoccurring (Preuss, 2013). However, it is also acknowledged that RCA is more complicated in education because of the complexity of social systems (Preuss, 2013). Therefore, there may be several root causes for an education problem (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016; Preuss, 2013). In this research, we identify root causes based on the evaluation, “by dissolving any one of the multiple root causes, the symptoms can be reduced or even eliminated” (Preuss, 2013, p. 4).

Although RCA originated from the field of health science, it does not suggest a positivist epistemology. Rather, it acknowledges that root cause(s) can be multiple and constructive (Preuss, 2013). The use of RCA implies that there are different levels of causes beneath the surface of the problem representation (Preuss, 2013). It also suggests the existence of a power relation among contributing causes. This research aims to identify the problem representation of policies and interrogate how policies have tried to solve the problem—how the problem can be thought about differently and what the most fundamental causes are. In other words, we aim to ascertain the deepest layer in the compounds of policy problems. Therefore, it becomes critical and effective to combine RCA and WPR as our analytical lens. As Bacchi (2021) contends, “‘tools’ reflect contrasting paradigms whereas ‘lenses’ can and do cross paradigmatic lines” (para. 4). We care not only about how the problem is represented in policies, but also how it can be thought about differently.

Instead of focusing on the meaning of academic burden constructed in the policies, this study pays attention to how the problem of academic burden is represented within policies and how the problem can be thought about differently. Specifically, Bacchi’s theory helps interpret the constructed problems underpinned by research sub-question 1 and 2; whereas Preuss’ (2013) theory provides a critical lens to critique the effectiveness of policies in Chinese contexts referred to in the research sub-question 3. This theoretical framework has been adopted to answer the overarching research question of how MOE policies have been formulated in an attempt to solve the problem of the academic burden in China.

Methods

Policy selection and collection

In this study, policies relating to the reduction of academic burden were found on the official website of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (http://www.moe.gov.cn), because this study focuses on the overarching problematisation of the academic burden in the country. The selection of policies was limited to the past 10 years because the researchers sought to make sense of the trend in the current education reform. Considering the time constraints of this research project, two policy documents were identified that were most closely related to the reduction of academic burden on primary school students (see Table 1). According to the description and chronology, Policy 2 is a more detailed and comprehensive policy than Policy 1. All these documents are compliant with the criteria for assessing the quality of documents suggested by Scott (1990) in terms of authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaning.

Table 1 Selected policy documents
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Data analysis

This study adopts a problem-solving lens to interrogate the fundamental causes that impede the implementation of policies. In this study, thematic analysis was employed (Bryman, 2016). Preuss’ (2013) account of RCA provides a tool to help thematically code each policy statement (the contributing cause) of an existing problem (Preuss, 2013).

First, according to Preuss (2013), contributing causes can be sorted into four themes: themes related to the level of an incident or procedure, the programmatic level, the systematic level, and the external level. Second, for each theme, there are sub-themes. Preuss (2013) has pre-identified them as sub-causes of educational problems. For instance, at the external level, there are causes related to one’s family, health, community, media, youth culture, and so on (Preuss, 2013). Table 2 lists select significant policies representing the themes. This coding method developed the ‘depth’ of the data analysis as it intended to sort data into ‘vertical’ categories.

Table 2 Examples of identified themes
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Results

A process of responsibilisation

Responsibilisation refers to setting responsibilities for stakeholders related to the quality and outcomes of education as a new form of self-governance (Torrance, 2015; Trnka & Trundle, 2014). Both Policy 1 and Policy 2 required different stakeholders to take the corresponding responsibilities of reducing the academic burden. The policies ensured that the academic burden would be lightened through the joint efforts of the school, private tutoring businesses, families, and the government. Table 3 shows the allocation of policy items in the four domains. In particular, it suggests that schools should take the major responsibility for reducing academic burden because most of the policy items initiating change were in the school domain.

Table 3 The Stakeholders in the Selected Policies
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What are the ‘problems’?

The ‘problems’ of academic burden are differently represented by four stakeholders (school, private tutoring business, families, and the government). In the school domain, academic burden appeared to be a problem of the deregulating behaviours related to running schools (MOE, 2013; 2018). For instance, setting up key classes in schools (MOE, 2018) is prohibited. Schools need to randomly and equally allocate students into classes because sorting and selecting students within schools through tracking result in inequality and potentially enacting class discrimination (Zhang & Bray, 2018).

For private tutoring businesses, ‘the problem’ of the academic burden appeared to be unstandardised private tutoring practices (MOE, 2018). According to MOE (2018), unstandardised private tutoring practices can be seen as accelerated teaching, prolonged teaching hours, and selling tutoring services by showcasing promising students’ achievement. These unstandardised private tutoring practices increase emotional burnout among students (MOE, 2018; Zhang & Bray 2018). Thus, regulating private tutoring businesses to prevent them from being a burden on students by encouraging rote learning and excessive competition is important (MOE, 2018).

For families, the ‘problem’ of the academic burden is a problem of managing parents’ expectations. For example, it is documented that setting realistic expectations for children and encouraging them to develop talents and skills is necessary for parents (MOE, 2018). Parents’ unrealistic expectations may encourage peer competition which results in an excessive academic burden on students (MOE, 2018). Therefore, parents should take the responsibility for building good communication with schools and guiding students to live a healthy life.

For the government, the academic burden is an educational supervision ‘problem’. For example, some local governments may give schools a quantifiable measurement, such as the number of students who pass the high school entrance examination, to evaluate schools’ quality (MOE, 2018). Evaluating and rewarding education departments and schools based on students’ performance in exams is prohibited (MOE, 2018). Besides, governments should ensure that students can enroll in schools nearby their living places, not relying on exam outcomes or award certificates (MOE, 2013; 2018). Governments should ban practices such as selecting and grouping top-performance students because such practices encourage a culture of competitiveness in schools (MOE, 2018).

What are the root causes?

Educational values and educational equity were the most fundamental causes of the academic burden (see Table 4). We argue that the academic burden cannot be alleviated without fundamentally addressing the issues of educational values and the distribution of educational resources. First, the current dilemma of students about the academic burden alleviation results from inconsistency between the espoused values in policies and social practices (Zhao et al., 2015). For instance, if schools can fully implement the educational values endorsed in policies, such as ensuring students’ well-rounded development without stressing them out about exam-oriented learning, the academic burden on students can be reduced. Similarly, in practice, if parents focus less on educational competitiveness and pay more attention to their children’s well-rounded development, the academic burden also can be alleviated. Second, aligning schools’ and parents’ practised values with espoused values in policies without first addressing the educational equity in relation to the distribution of resources is difficult (school quality, staffing quality, and teaching equipment). Educational competitiveness in schools will be significantly reduced when educational resources are equally allocated among schools (Zhang & Bray, 2018).

Table 4 Root Cause Analysis of Academic Burden (remove the extra line present below the table in PDF)
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Private tutoring has burdened students with rote learning and by the method of accelerated teaching (MOE, 2018). Nevertheless, we argue that private tutoring is not the root cause because a rational individual is less likely to expend further energy and resources if “the returns involved are less than the costs of the effort” (Jenkins, 1978, p. 125). In this case, the phrase “the returns” means more equal opportunities in terms of assessing education resources and seeking personal development.

In summary, the academic burden was framed as a problem that needed to be fixed by the accountability of the school, family, private tutoring businesses, and government. However, the problem of the academic burden will not be fixed without addressing the most fundamental causes: educational values in the Chinese context and educational equity. Therefore, we claim that adequately addressing these issues and recognising their root causes in society is essential for effectively reducing the academic burden.

Discussion

This section will discuss three significant issues emerging from policies relating to the reduction of the academic burden: educational values endorsed by policies, educational values perceived by families, and educational equity. It aims to compare between the findings and the previous literature to reflect on these critical issues. In this section, it is argued that education policymakers need to consider the complexity of social change to implement actions for the effective reduction of the academic burden.

Educational values endorsed in policies

First, this study confirms the findings of the previous ones that the academic burden is strengthened in China because of the changing nature of their economies geared towards a knowledge economy (Liu & Fang, 2009; Stromquist, 2002; Zhao et al., 2015). According to Rizvi & Lingard (2010, p. 71), “education is a deliberate, purposive activity directed at the achievement of a range of ends” that includes the development of knowledgeable individuals who can realise economic goals that benefit both individuals and local communities. In the twenty-first century, it is less desirable to produce students who are merely good at taking exams because society needs students who have the complex skills, expertise, and creativity needed to face future challenges (Fadel & Trilling, 2009). As Chinese educational reform is justified by the quality of the people it will produce (Kipnis, 2007), reducing the academic burden is tied to the concern that the quality of education will be disrupted by the quality of students’ lives—their well-being (Löfstedt, 1980; Wright & McLeod, 2015). Therefore, the current imperative of schooling is to produce well-rounded students equipped with the knowledge, moral values, emotions, attitudes, and creative minds who can benefit their communities. This is consistent with the literature (Cravens et al., 2012; Kipnis, 2007; Wang, 2016).

Then, as current policies have attached a strong emphasis on the well-rounded development and well-being of students, the competitive nature of the Chinese education system did not change as students and parents expected (Yan, 2014; Zhao et al., 2015). This also accords with our earlier observation that performance, competition, and rankings are still valued by the Chinese assessment system (Yan, 2014; Zhao et al., 2015; Zhang & Bray, 2018). For instance, peer competition and private tutoring businesses as represented in Policy 2 (MOE, 2018) indicates that exam performance is still important in the Chinese education system. As Ball et al., (1995) put it, competition between schools has caused the risk of success or failure in the marketplace, resulting in an excessive burden being placed on children. Therefore, inconsistency between a twenty-first-century curriculum aiming at students’ well-rounded development and a lagged behind exam-oriented assessment system has resulted in a dilemma for students and teachers (Yan, 2014). This result further proves that reducing students’ academic burden is a wicked problem.

Educational values perceived by parents

Parents also perceive education as a purposeful activity (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Previous studies on the academic burden have not dealt with the understanding of well-being from the perspectives of different stakeholders. This study reveals that policies related to the reduction of the academic burden expose the tension between the understanding of well-being as an end goal and a means (Chapman, 2015). A possible explanation for this might be that because the well-being and exam performance are both valued by society (MOE, 2013; 2018), Chinese parents prioritise achievement and well-being as an end goal, hoping that this goal is achieved when economic goals are realised (Chapman, 2015).

Parents’ perception—valuing education as a means to personal long-term well-being—increases the complexity of reducing the academic burden. According to Zhao et al., (2015), parental anxiety is one of the most significant obstacles to alleviating the academic burden because the income gap is strongly linked to educational qualifications. Furthermore, this anxiety has been triggered and reinforced by social networking, resulting in the normality of anxious families (Ball, 2003). This result reflects those of Ball (2003) who found that middle-class families are more anxious than non-middle-class ones. For example, middle-class families can reduce their risk by paying by the standard of the educational market to ensure a high possibility of educational achievement and social privilege. With abundant choices in the market, families are constantly worried about “getting things wrong, about failing the child, about mistaking priorities, about not finding the perfect school or right university” (Ball, 2003, p. 171). As discussed previously, well-being is unwarranted as the future is uncertain (Wright & McLeod, 2015); therefore, families maximise their risk management strategies at the expense of the academic burden and anxiety. As Ball (2003, p. 172) continues, “such responses are outside the rational, not irrational, but irreducible to a simple calculability.” As a result, there were gaps in the understanding of well-being between policies and different social and economic classes.

Reduction of the academic burden and educational equity

Interestingly, conflicts and contradictions in understanding educational values and well-being within different social and economic classes reflect educational equity issues in China. This observation corroborates previous findings of the inequality of resource distribution (Kai, 2014; Li & Li, 2010; Zhao et al., 2015; Zou, 2019). Indeed, the centralisation of resources (key schools, key classes, and other hierarchical settings) has great implications for efficient production but has unintended consequences in equity disruption. This signals the concern of governmentality that “market efficiency concerns now seem to override equity ones” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 16). In this case, the academic burden is a battle between economic efficiency and the social equity goal of education. In China, compulsory education ensures every student equal access to education—students can enroll in the nearest school (MOE, 2018). Nevertheless, the notions of high-quality schools and high-quality classes disrupt this equity and potentially encourage competitiveness in education among students, parents, and schools (Zhang & Bray, 2018).

There is an established body of literature problematising the college entrance exam for putting excess pressure on students (Li & Li, 2010; Sang et al., 2017; Yan, 2014). However, as Zhao et al., (2015) put it, the college entrance exam has positive effects in the Chinese context. The exam is a relatively objective way for students to access higher education, especially those from underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, students who come from poor regions need the college entrance exam to gain university degrees and attain decent jobs because they do not have enough support from their families to realise upward social mobility (Zhao et al., 2015). Therefore, we argue that policymakers need to reform the college entrance exam into a less high-stakes model so that students have various opportunities to access higher education. Further, education authorities need to balance the imperatives between the centralisation and decentralisation of resources, and between the notions of efficiency and equity. As policies state (MOE, 2018), allocating educational resources (teachers, equipment, and funds) to cool down educational competitiveness is important. In a sense, students need an effective and equitable system to support their well-rounded development.

As discussed above, this study has shown that to reduce the academic burden, there are more complex issues at play such as educational values and educational equity in Chinese society. This work contributes to the existing knowledge of the academic burden reduction by providing a critical analysis of inconsistency between the espoused values in policies and social practices. First, in China, the academic burden is a product of the changing imperative of building a knowledge economy. Therefore, as the Chinese case informs above, policymakers may decide at one point to shift an education system from an exam-oriented one to a more well-rounded one that requires students to have complex skills, expertise, and creativity to face future challenges, as the policymakers recognise a need for their economy and society to evolve. Second, the academic burden exposes the tension between the understanding of well-being as an end goal and a means within different classes, families, and individuals. Third, those conflicts and contradictions in terms of the understanding of educational values and well-being within different social and economic classes reflect the problem of educational equity in the given society as discussed in this study based on the Chinese contexts. In a sense, although the academic burden seems to be a debate on the meaning of well-being, it involves broader issues in society, such as educational values and educational equity.

Conclusion

This study attempted to investigate the problems involved in the academic burden and analyse how MOE policies caused the academic burden. The findings clearly indicate that: (1) the academic burden was constructed as a systemic flaw that needed to be fixed via a partnership with stakeholders; (2) the ‘problems’ of the academic burden have different representations in stakeholders; (3) educational values and educational equity were the most fundamental causes of the academic burden. The present study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of the academic burden as a social problem associated with educational values and educational equity in the Chinese case. Reducing the academic burden comes from good intentions, as its aim is to address the well-being of Chinese children, but the outcome is not as effective as stakeholders expected owing to resistance from society (Kai, 2014; Li & Li, 2010; Yan, 2014; Zhao et al., 2015). This study shows that without fundamentally addressing the issues of educational values and educational equity, policies cannot solve the problem of the academic burden.

Implications

In this study, the researchers claim that to reduce the academic burden, stakeholders need to prioritise students’ well-being by shifting the emphasis of schooling from economic aims to educational aims—a personal value of quality of life. According to Chapman (2015, p. 146), “one consequence of an education system with a key focus on economic ends may be a view of students that fails to recognize them as human beings who have interests other than economic ones” (Chapman, 2015, p. 146). In particular, the results of this research support the idea that attention should be given to young people’s physical and mental health (Wright & McLeod, 2015). This does not suggest that educational excellence is no longer important in the education system. Nevertheless, it should provoke policymakers, educators, and parents to ponder what to prioritise in terms of providing ‘good’ education to students and how to achieve this goal.

As the policy is a matter of “the authoritative allocation of values” (Kogan, 1975, p. 55), the family choice is also a matter of the allocation of values. The findings of this study suggest that the government needs to provide more options and opportunities for families to diversify value allocation to maintain socio-economic stability or realise upward social mobility. Future research could be undertaken to investigate the conceptualisation of socio-economic stability in China and how different generations of parents manage socio-economic stability. The academic burden is what Chinese families choose as the price for the ‘insurance’ of well-being in the future. However, this study also suggests that families need to recognise that investing in education is not the only means to achieve the aim of well-being, and academic success is not the only evaluation of education. As much of the discussion of well-being is from Anglo cultural locations, another potentially fruitful avenue for future research is to investigate the conceptualisation of well-being in the Chinese context and what well-being really means to students, educators, parents, and policymakers.

Limitations

The most important limitation of this study is that as it evolves, more policies on the reduction of the academic burden will be issued. ‘Double reduction’ policies that aim to regulate primary and secondary students’ homework in schools and outside schools are examples. As the policies keep evolving and involving wider discourses in society, how the problem of the academic burden is going to be framed and constructed will be on-going dynamic. We believe that being engaged with these discussions of the latest policy updates is important. As the academic burden represents the governmentality of neoliberalism, the goal of problematising neo-liberal governance is “to create the space to reflect critically on all proposals for change, including one’s own recommendations” (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016, p. 25).