Urban scaling of basic education systems of Chinese cities

Abstract

Educational systems must accommodate demographic concentration in cities while maintaining teaching capacity, yet whether student enrolment, teacher inputs, and school facilities respond uniformly to city size remains unclear. Here, we analyzed the scaling of these three dimensions with population across Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020. In 2020, all six indicators scaled sublinearly with population (β ~ 0.74–0.87). In primary education, students and teachers shared an exponent of 0.87, whereas schools scaled more sublinearly (β = 0.74). These results indicate that average school size increases with city size, particularly in primary education, while student–teacher ratios remain broadly scale-neutral. Economies of scale in education provision therefore arise mainly through the organization of school facilities rather than through reduced teacher provision per student. Scale-adjusted indicators also revealed pronounced regional disparities: primary education indicators generally exceeded population-based expectations in central and southern China but fell below expectations in many northeastern, northern, and eastern coastal cities. The broadly corresponding spatial patterns of students, teachers, and schools suggest that educational resources generally follow regional differences in student enrolment. Overall, larger cities organize basic education through relatively fewer and larger schools without a corresponding reduction in teaching capacity relative to student enrolment.

Keywords

Urban system / Scaling law / Basic education system / Educational resources / Chinese cities

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(42571489)

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