How is Educational Equity Possible: The Evolutionary Logic of Compulsory Education Enrollment Policies from the Perspective of Historical Institutionalism

The enrollment policy for compulsory education concerns the right of school-age children and adolescents to receive equal education, as well as the realization of educational equity. Based on the analytical framework of historical institutionalism, this paper examines the evolutionary logic of the enrollment policy for compulsory education. Since the founding of New China, China's enrollment policy for compulsory education has undergone four periods: efficiency priority, balancing efficiency and fairness, emphasizing fairness, and implementing fairness, reflecting a shift in policy value orientation from efficiency to fairness. Economic system reform, uneven regional development, and the concept of educational equity are the underlying structural factors influencing policy changes. Rational choices made by actors such as the government, schools, and parents have led to path dependence in policy changes. Reform and opening up, initial education reform, and comprehensive reform in the field of education have become three critical junctures in promoting policy changes. We should always adhere to educational equity as the policy value goal, seek to break through path dependence at critical junctures, and focus on the coordination of multiple subjects in the gradual development of policies, in order to better achieve educational equity.