The Concept of Double Reduction Policy
In July 2021, the government issued the “Opinions on Further Reducing the Work Burden and Extracurricular Study Burden of Students in Compulsory Education” (hereinafter referred to as the Double Reduction Policy), which has been implemented and has gradually begun to bear fruit (Wang et al., 2023).
Since 2021, the Double Reduction Policy has received a lot of attention as a hot item. It is a correction to the chaos and involution of traditional education (Lu et al., 2023). The Double Reduction Policy mainly includes the following aspects: First, double reduction refers to reducing the burden on primary and secondary school students in terms of homework time. Second, it is necessary to strengthen the management of school after-school services, improve school teaching quality and expand access to educational resources (Xiang et al., 2023). Third, it reduces students’ participation in shadow education. Fourth, it improves the supporting measures of the Double Reduction Policy to ensure the quality of school teaching, achieve home-school cooperation, and establish a correct outlook on education (Gupta & Aluvalu, 2021).
Figure 3. Proportion of Students with Heavy Academic Burden in Some Provinces in 2018
In the Double Reduction Policy, double reduction mainly refers to the need to reduce the burden of homework and off-campus training, which is called double reduction (Liu et al., 2023). In this study, double reduction is used as the independent variable, and the independent variable is divided into two dimensions: reducing homework burden and reducing off-campus training to explore the impact on parents' educational anxiety of primary and secondary school students. The proportion of students receiving off-campus training in each province in 2018 before the double reduction policy is shown in the figure below (Xue et al., 2022).
Figure 4. Proportion of Students Receiving Off-Campus Training in Each Province in 2018
Parent Education Anxiety Concept
Some foreign scholars have suggested that parents who are at social risk are out of control because they are afraid that educational inequality will result in their students being unable to win in educational competition, which will lead to lower social status and make them feel anxious (Li et al., 2023). The specific manifestation is that when parents invest time and energy in students, but do not get the expected results, parents will have educational anxiety (Naz, 2021). Foreign scholar Spielber defines educational anxiety as a kind of state anxiety (Yadav & Sagar, 2023). Wang Hongcai was the first person in China to propose the concept of parental educational anxiety(Wang, 2023). He defined parental educational anxiety as: excessive emotional anxiety caused by people's excessive anxiety about students' educational results, fearing that they would not be able to study well or find a good job (Shaw, 2023). To sum up, parents’ educational anxiety refers to the educational anxiety caused by parents’ teaching process of their children and the anxiety caused by parents’ dissatisfaction with the educational results (Wen et al., 2023). In the vast literature, there are many meaningful studies on parents’ educational anxiety. Countless scholars have participated in related topics and deeply explored the causes, current situation, and status of educational anxiety from different perspectives, dimensions, and theories (Alam & Mohanty, 2023). There are also fruitful results regarding the dimensions of parents’ anxiety, such as parents’ anxiety about students’ love outlook, health anxiety, peer group anxiety, future development anxiety, learning attitude anxiety, etc. (Horton, 2023).