Abstract:

The public-funded education system for normal students in universities affiliated to the Ministry is an important education policy which aims to enrich the teaching team and promote education equity. This study focuses on the performance of public-funded normal graduates in actual teaching process. By tracking the academic performance of first-year students in a middle school in central China,the empirical comparison shows that there is a significant difference in the improvement of academic performance between students taught by public-funded normal teachers and non public-funded normal teachers:The average grade improvement of students taught by public-funded normal teachers was lower by approximately 3%,and this gap gradually expanded with the teaching process. This reflects that there may be some problems in the teaching level and teaching quality of public-funded normal teachers, and it also shows that some of the negative incentives existing in the public-funded normal education policy in the teaching and training of normal students deserve high attention. Based on this empirical result, this study puts forward a series of policy recommendations from three aspects: training concept, model and result.

Key words: public-funded normal education, teaching quality, academic achievement, policy research