Improving educational equity by maximizing service coverage in rural Changyuan, China: An evaluation-optimization-validation framework based on spatial accessibility to schools

Abstract

Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education is a primary goal in the United Nations' agenda for sustainable development. Under this global initiative, China has been striving to achieve equitable education in rural areas through the planning and development of rural schools. To this end, the paper focuses on the rural school planning issue by proposing an evaluation-optimization-validation framework in a case study in Changyuan, a county-level city in China. Specifically, by focusing on the nine-year compulsory education institutions, including elementary schools, junior high schools, and nursery schools, the paper first identifies the low-school-accessibility areas by a modified Huff three-step floating catchment area (MH3SFCA) method. Then, the paper optimizes the school locations using the maximum covering location problem by the complementary coverage (MCLP-CC) model by improving the equity of school access. Lastly, a comparative analysis before and after the optimization reveals that except for elementary schools, the spatial equality of the school-specific accessibility and that of the overall accessibility have both been improved to a significant degree. The proposed framework provides a new scientific procedure for schools’ location planning, and the implementation results can provide insights into future planning initiatives to promote educational equity in rural China and beyond.