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Although the school mapping restructure
(SMR) program in rural China mainly aims to improve the
efficiency of education, this paper aims to show that the
principle of educational equity should be given more
attention, as evidence suggests that some children lose the
opportunity to learn at a local village and rural families
have different preferences regarding merged and unmerged
schools. The study on which this paper is based aims to
understand the family school choice preferences under
SMR, through a combination of questionnaires, interviews,
and document analysis. Participating in the study were
10,000 parents whose children were in merged and unmerged
primary schools (a total of 986 schools), from 178
towns in 38 counties of six provinces in mid-western
China. Data were collected mainly by questionnaires and
analyzed by a binary logistic regression model as a tool to
estimate school preference probabilities. The study finds
that in the context of SMR, several related factors impact
the willingness of families to choose certain schools for
their children. Although many merged schools have better
facilities and more qualified teachers, a number of families
still prefer unmerged schools for their children due to
shorter commuting distances and smaller school sizes,
factors which offer improved school accessibility. This
study also reveals that other related factors including parents’
education, economic condition, etc., are strong
influencers of family schooling preferences. Based on the
results, the policy implications are that integration of both
points of efficiency and equity of education when enacting
SMR should be considered.