Researcher at the China Institute of Education and Social Development, Beijing Normal University, former first level inspector of the Textbook Bureau of the Ministry of Education, and Vice Chairman of the Academic Committee of the China Education Society

The foundation of building an education powerhouse lies in basic education. For over a century, China's basic education curriculum has undergone a development process from its inception to the gradual formation of a system. The curriculum reform has achieved significant results, and a new curriculum system with Chinese characteristics and more in line with the requirements of the times has been basically established. However, there are still some urgent practical problems that need to be solved in the process of curriculum reform. Therefore, this article systematically analyzes the challenges and future directions of basic education curriculum reform from three aspects: the development history of basic education curriculum in China, the new requirements and challenges faced in the new era, and future trends, and explores its improvement path.

1、 A Retrospective History of the Development of Basic Education Curriculum in China

The basic process of curriculum reform and development in China over the past century

The curriculum system is the core carrier of school education, directly reflecting educational concepts and the level of educational development. The modern curriculum system of basic education in China has a history of over a hundred years since its establishment and development. To understand and recognize today's curriculum, we need to briefly review and reflect on the development history of basic education curriculum.

The development history of basic education curriculum in China can be roughly divided into two periods. The first period was before the founding of the People's Republic of China, which went through a process from emergence to gradual systematization. In 1904, the Qing Dynasty promulgated and implemented the "Regulations on the Establishment of Schools", which stipulated the curriculum for primary and secondary schools and opened up modern curriculum construction. In the Republican era, with the spread of Western educational ideas, a modern curriculum system was initially established.

The second period was after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and according to the changes in political, social, and cultural development, the development of curriculum construction can be divided into four stages. One is the stage of "complete Sufism" in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, during which basic education, higher education, and even the entire education system were mainly transformed and introduced, mainly imitating or copying the Soviet model, reflecting a distinct planned economy color. The second stage was the "pan politicization" phase during the Cultural Revolution, during which normal educational activities were severely impacted. The curriculum and textbooks were dominated by politics, and primary and secondary school teachers and students left the school gates to study and run schools in "big classrooms" such as factories, rural areas, troops, and shops. Workers, peasants, and soldiers were invited to the podium, and the teaching plan was arbitrary and politically charged. The third is the "diversification" stage after the reform and opening up, where higher education and basic education have entered an open stage and begun to learn from developed Western countries; Based on the actual situation in China, three types of courses have been set up: national, local, and school. A three-level curriculum management system has been established, and the teaching materials for primary and secondary schools have shifted from "one syllabus, one textbook" to "one syllabus, multiple textbooks". The fourth is the stage of "comprehensive deepening" after entering the new era, implementing the fundamental task of cultivating morality and talents, strengthening education as the foundation, adhering to the guidance of core literacy, promoting the reform of education methods, and initially forming a basic education curriculum system with Chinese characteristics.

2. Major explorations of curriculum reform since the founding of the People's Republic of China

The reform of basic education curriculum involves many aspects, among which the most important are the curriculum management system, textbook construction, and examination evaluation content and methods. One is the curriculum management system, which involves what courses are set up, who decides, and what kind of curriculum standards are formulated; The second is textbook construction, which involves the basis for writing and revising textbooks, who writes textbooks, and how textbooks are selected; The third aspect is the content and method of exam evaluation, which involves what to test (i.e. exam direction), how to test, and how to use exam results.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, different paths have been taken in curriculum, textbook, and examination reforms to address specific issues and tasks at different times. Understanding the path of reform helps us recognize the historical inevitability of advancing reform today.

Firstly, the development of the curriculum management system has gone through a highly unified, open and diverse process. From the establishment of the People's Republic of China until the reform and opening up in 1978, whether it was the "complete Su ization" at the beginning of liberation or the "pan politicization" during the Cultural Revolution, curriculum management was highly centralized due to the influence of the planned economy, with the most typical manifestation being the "one syllabus, one textbook" mentioned earlier. The reason for the centralization feature is directly related to the implementation of the socialist system after the founding of the People's Republic of China. To break the old system, establish a new society, and let the people be the masters of the country, it is necessary to establish a unified education system that is oriented towards the workers and peasants, and the curriculum should reflect the needs of socialist construction. Without going through the process of centralization, it is impossible to establish an education system with Chinese characteristics.

During the period from 1978 to 2000, with the increasing degree of opening up to the outside world and the expansion of fields, especially the prominent changes in the economic system, people's ideological concepts were widely and profoundly influenced. The reform of basic education curriculum conforms to this trend, and the enthusiasm for reform in local schools is high, presenting a bottom-up reform situation. During this period, various educational theories are parallel and various experiments are conducted simultaneously. For example, the "thinking quality" theory teaching reform experiment of Professor Lin Chongde of Beijing Normal University was carried out in more than 3000 schools in 26 provinces (cities and autonomous regions) in China, the "self-study tutorship teaching" experiment presided over by Professor Lu Zhongheng of the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the "asynchronous teaching" created by Professor Li Shifa of Hubei University, the "Qingpu Experiment" presided over by Professor Gu Lingyuan of Shanghai, the "phonetic literacy, early reading and writing" experiment carried out by Heilongjiang Institute of Education, and a large number of teaching reform experiments were widely carried out, presenting a situation of blooming flowers.

After entering the new century, in 2001, the State Council issued the Decision on the Reform and Development of Basic Education, which called for accelerating the construction of a new basic education curriculum system that meets the requirements of quality education. On the basis of comprehensively summarizing the experience of basic education curriculum reform since the reform and opening up, adapting to the needs of the times, and combining with China's actual situation, the Ministry of Education has successively issued curriculum plans and standards for compulsory education and ordinary high schools, clarifying the direction and requirements of reform, and unifying diverse experimental explorations with the requirements of the Party and the state for education. At the same time, by formulating national curriculum implementation plans and methods tailored to local conditions, strengthening the construction of local and school-based courses (elective courses), and meeting the requirements for the construction and implementation of diverse and distinctive courses on the basis of unified norms.

Secondly, the development of the textbook management system has gone through three stages: national customization, approval system, and mixed system. Before 2000, China implemented "national customization" for textbook management, which was basically "one syllabus, one textbook". After 2000, the "approval system" was implemented, which means that the approval and review of textbook compilation and review are managed at two levels: the education administrative department of the State Council and the provincial education administrative department. Under the guidance of national basic requirements, diversified textbooks are implemented, namely "one syllabus, multiple textbooks". The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that cultivating virtue and nurturing people is the fundamental task of education. Textbooks, as the main carrier for implementing the fundamental task of cultivating morality and talents, must strengthen their educational function. The ideological attributes of moral and legal education, ideological and political education, Chinese language, and history textbooks in primary and secondary schools are distinct. Implementing unified compilation, review, and use is a manifestation of implementing the new requirements of the Party for education in the new era. Following the laws of education, we focus on leveraging the unique educational functions of textbooks in various subjects, and other subjects outside of the three subjects still implement an approval system.

Thirdly, the development of the examination and enrollment system has gone through three stages: "red+specialized", "red oriented", and "unified red specialized". Before the Cultural Revolution, the main mode of examination and enrollment was "cultural courses+political review". Political review was closely related to the background of candidates, in order to strictly control political scrutiny and reflect the requirement for "red", and this requirement was relatively specific and rigid. During the Cultural Revolution, there were significant changes in exam requirements, with political factors taking the lead. The requirements for cultural courses were greatly weakened, and "red" was the core standard. After the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, although political review was no longer conducted, regardless of whether it was a liberal arts or a science subject, the college entrance examination had to test politics, measuring students' ideological status based on their learning situation in a single course; With the deepening of the college entrance examination reform, especially the proposition reform, China is striving to build a comprehensive examination content system that covers morality, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics, and labor, reflecting ideological and political requirements in the evaluation of various subject exams, and unifying the examination of "red" and "specialized" into the process of students solving problems.

2、 Requirements for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education in the New Era

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, in order to fully implement the fundamental task of cultivating morality and talents, the Ministry of Education has successively revised the curriculum textbooks for compulsory education and ordinary high schools, vigorously promoted the comprehensive reform of examination and evaluation, and achieved positive results. According to the central deployment, accelerating the process of building a strong education country, the reform and development of basic education curriculum are facing new requirements and challenges.

1. The situation faced by the reform and development of basic education curriculum

(1) New deployment of central education reform

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that "education, science and technology, and talent are the fundamental and strategic supports for the comprehensive construction of a socialist modernized country", and we must "comprehensively improve the quality of independent talent training and focus on cultivating top-notch innovative talents". In the strategic deployment of education, technology, and talent, "cultivating top-notch innovative talents" is of paramount importance. As is well known, competition between countries ultimately boils down to competition for talent. In September 2024, in the list of the world's top 2% scientists released by the research team of Stanford University, 10687 people from Chinese Mainland were shortlisted, accounting for only 4.92%; Between 2012 and 2022, Chinese universities and research institutions trained a total of 669143 doctoral students, equivalent to one-third of the 2016637 students in the United States. It is obvious that there is still a significant gap between the number of top-notch innovative talents in China and the national strategic goals, and it is necessary to accelerate the construction of a world-class talent center and innovation highland.

The cultivation of talents, especially top-notch innovative talents, cannot be achieved overnight. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that basic education is the foundation, while higher education is the leader. Only with a solid foundation can the leader have momentum. However, there are still some areas that urgently need improvement in identifying, selecting, and cultivating top innovative talents in China.

Firstly, the identification and selection criteria for top-notch innovative reserve talents in the basic education stage need to be improved. At present, the identification and selection of top-notch innovative reserve talents in the basic education stage is mainly based on "examination", with intelligence as the core standard, and insufficient attention paid to endogenous driving factors such as interests and aspirations. We found through investigation that about one-third of the students admitted through the Olympic competition at a key university use the competition as a "stepping stone" to enter the university, showing a clear tendency to take the exam; The overall learning motivation of college students in the "Youth Class" is mainly intrinsic motivation, but 60% of students still consider "easy access to higher education" as one of the reasons for joining the "Youth Class", showing utilitarianism; About one-third of students have a vague understanding of what kind of person they will become in the future and the difficulties they may encounter in their work; About 1/5 of students lack confidence in their future.

Secondly, the scale of specialized training in the basic education stage is small and the training methods are single. At present, there are only a few training programs designed for students with innovative potential. At the national level, there is only the "Talent Program" for middle school students, which admits less than 2000 students annually; The projects established at the provincial level only include the "Soaring Plan" in Beijing and the "Eagle Plan" in Chongqing, with a scale of less than 200 people per province per year; The high school "gifted class" established to serve the "youth class" of universities admits less than 1000 students annually. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 6.6% of all primary and secondary school students in the United States participate in gifted programs each year. Taking the 2017-2018 statistics as an example, there were approximately 3.5 million students. In addition, the training mode is basically an accelerated approach that compresses the curriculum after concentration, while decentralized and enriched training is not common.

The third issue is the lack of connection between primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Taking the "Strong Foundation Plan" enrollment as an example, only 1.5% of strong foundation students have participated in science and technology innovation projects during their secondary school years. According to statistics, among the 946 and 1016 students who participated in the "Talent Plan" for middle school students in 2020 and 2021, only 0.8% and 1.2% respectively entered the "Strong Foundation Plan" during the enrollment process. Out of the tens of thousands of students who participate in the five major competitions of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and informatics every year, less than 300 are eligible for recommendation to universities. Tsinghua University's "Qiu Chengtong Mathematics Science Leading Talent Training Program" and Peking University's "Physics Discipline Excellent Talent Training Program" enroll no more than 100 students annually. Overall, there is still a need for effective integration between basic education and higher education in identifying and cultivating top-notch innovative reserve talents.

(2) New Trends in Social Development and Changes

The era of digital intelligence has brought not only the disappearance of certain job positions, but also changes in the overall social structure. British sociologist Jamie Susskind pointed out in his book "The Power of Algorithms: How Humans Survive Together" that in the future society, after digitization, new patterns of fairness, rights, freedom, justice, etc. will emerge, and the governance of the entire society will also undergo revolutionary changes. These changes, especially the replacement of human physical labor and most mental labor by artificial intelligence, pose a challenge to the educational function. The knowledge centered educational paradigm will be completely changed, and the cultivation of sustainable development literacy such as intrinsic interest, innovative consciousness, imagination, healthy behavior, and aesthetic taste will become the main goal of education.

German sociologist Andreas Leibniz summarized the characteristics of current social transformation in his book "Unique Society: Modern Structural Transformation", emphasizing the uniqueness of society and pointing out that current societies are pursuing uniqueness and distinctive features, no longer exhibiting standardized and integrated characteristics like the industrial era. This change has brought significant impacts to social life, production, and other aspects. Today's society emphasizes more on customization, and culture presents diversity, making it difficult for people's viewpoints and opinions to form a highly unified understanding. In the context of this social transformation, education towards traditional, basic, and unified social ethical norms and moral requirements will be affected, and the achievement of collective and unified ideological understanding will also face challenges. Based on this, in the future, schools should pay more attention to non knowledge education, such as aspiration education, personality education, moral education, emotional education, etc., as well as pay more attention to diverse thinking, cultivate students' flexibility and adaptability, and strengthen personal autonomy and self-discipline.

The arrival of a diversified and personalized society, as well as a distributed cognitive pattern, has brought revolutionary impact to today's standardized education. However, today we still adopt a class based teaching system, where students in the same class face a unified curriculum, textbooks, teaching progress, and exam papers. These standardized arrangements are incompatible with personalized social conditions. This requires us to not only grasp the direction of education, but also increase the reform of the education system and mechanism, innovate the curriculum and textbook system, and continue to promote the transformation of educational methods.

(3) New issues in student growth

With the development of the economy and society and technological progress, the environment for students' growth has undergone profound changes. While promoting students' better growth, new problems have also emerged.

One is the deviation of aspirations. We conducted a survey and analysis on the life aspirations of 10347 middle school, high school, and college students, and the results showed that one-third of the students were confused about their future; In a survey of tens of thousands of primary, secondary, and tertiary students' career aspirations, only 2.06% were willing to become engineers, due to the fact that engineers are "hardworking", "dirty and tiring", and "sometimes risky".

Secondly, there is a lack of procedural experience. This generation of children is known as the "terminal perception generation", and most of them do not know how the items they use and consume in their daily lives come from, lack real labor experience and understanding, and cannot appreciate the value and significance of labor. A survey conducted among 15000 primary, secondary, and tertiary students nationwide showed that in the past year, over 70% of students have not visited factory production lines, and nearly half of students have not visited farms or forest farms; In the past 5 years, nearly one-third of students have not been exposed to agricultural activities or places, and nearly half of students have not been exposed to industrial activities or places.

The third is the indulgence of the soul. This generation of children has poor psychological resilience and resilience, and their mental health problems are more prominent. Professor Yu Guoliang, Director of the Institute of Psychology at Renmin University of China, conducted a meta-analysis of literature from 2010 to 2020, which showed that the top three detection rates of mental health problems among primary school students (101 studies) were sleep problems (25.2%), depression (14.6%), and anxiety (12.3%); The top three detection rates of mental health problems among junior high school students (222 studies) are anxiety (27%), depression (24%), and self harm (22%); The top three detection rates of mental health problems among high school students (252 studies) are depression (28.0%), anxiety (26.3%), and sleep problems (23.0%).

Fourthly, the physical fitness needs to be strengthened. The Report on the Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status of Chinese Residents (2020) points out that the overall overweight and obesity rate among children and adolescents aged 6-17 has shown a significant upward trend. The overweight and obesity rates in 2002, 2015, and 2020 were 4.5%, 9.6%, and 19.0%, respectively. During the 18 years from 2002 to 2020, the obesity rate among children and adolescents increased nearly fivefold.

2. Highlighting the Proposition of Deepening the Reform of Basic Education Curriculum

Curriculum is an important support for building a high-quality education system and a specific carrier for implementing the planning outline of building a strong education country. Based on the above historical review, analyzing the new situation and implementing new requirements, the reform of basic education curriculum will face the following propositions.

One is the unity of red and specialization. The relationship between being a person and doing things. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the curriculum, textbooks, and exams have taken into account both "red" and "specialized" aspects, but the focus has varied in different periods. In the new era, the key lies in the organic unity of "red" and "specialized", avoiding "two skins", fully implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions at the 2024 National Education Conference, handling the relationship between knowledge learning and comprehensive development, and continuously deepening subject practice and comprehensive learning reform.

The second is the unity of collection and release. The relationship between "unified norms" and "independent innovation". From 1949 to the present, one of the topics of curriculum, textbook, and examination evaluation reform has been how to deal with the issue of power "collection" and "release".  

The third is the unity of similarities and differences. The relationship between "fairness" and "uniqueness". As a socialist country, education follows the principle of putting the people at the center, and fairness is a prerequisite. But the differences between people objectively exist, and teaching students according to their aptitude is the basic principle of education. In today's world where everyone has access to education, respecting individuality, tapping into potential, and focusing on cultivating top-notch innovative talents are important tasks of education. In the new era, it is necessary to scientifically balance "similarities" and "differences", follow the principle of promoting talents based on adaptability, further enrich the curriculum supply, and explore the "personalized testing" and "tailor-made" examination evaluation.

3、 The Trend of Curriculum Reform in Basic Education in the New Era

Curriculum reform should not only adhere to the goal orientation and implement the new requirements of the Party Central Committee for education, but also pay attention to problem orientation and solve the deviations and deficiencies that arise in students' development in a targeted manner. It should also reflect innovation orientation and the empowerment of education by new technological achievements.

1. The virtualization of the school's' fence '

In the future, the 'walls' of schools will be blurred. The term 'wall' here refers not only to physical barriers, but also to breaking down the boundaries of schools and advocating lifelong learning. In the future, the endpoint of formal education will no longer be the endpoint of learning. Digital learning that is on-demand, on-demand, ubiquitous, and self paced will replace highly organized and planned learning. Learning outside of school spaces such as venue learning, field learning, and workplace learning will account for a certain proportion. To adapt to these changes, education within the school field needs to pay more attention to non knowledge learning and informal learning, which are characterized by learning motivation stimulation, learning interest guidance, situational relevance, voluntariness, individualization, and non-linearity.

2. Blurring of course boundaries

Zhuangzi said, "My life also has a limit, but knowledge has no limit. With a limit, there is no limit, and it is already in danger!" Knowledge grows exponentially, but students' learning time is limited, and subject based teaching is difficult to solve the contradiction between the two. At the same time, in order to adapt to the rapid and ever-changing requirements of social development, the cultivation of comprehensive literacy will become increasingly important. Correspondingly, problem centered and project-based comprehensive learning will become the main form, and the curriculum system and form will inevitably break through the boundaries of existing disciplines. Based on this, in the future education reform, we need to do two aspects of work well: first, expand the important positions of practical education and online education, coordinate and promote value guidance, practical experience, and environmental creation, and explore the establishment of an integrated education mechanism that combines both inside and outside the school and integrates online and offline education. The second is to strengthen the construction of comprehensive courses, emphasizing the integration of subject courses. The blurring of course boundaries means that the talent cultivation model of credit based teaching in primary and secondary schools, as well as the specialization in universities, will gradually be eliminated. Interdisciplinary, cross disciplinary, and problem driven learning will become the mainstream of future education.

3. Digitization of textbook forms

As a carrier of education and teaching, textbooks have relatively stable content and fixed form. However, with the updating of educational goals, personalized education needs, curriculum content reconstruction, and other changes, traditional paper textbooks can no longer fully meet the needs of education. Therefore, using artificial intelligence to change the content, form, and function of textbooks and build digital textbooks has become a development trend. Digital textbooks are not the digitization of current paper textbooks, but a revolutionary reconstruction, shifting from the preset nature of textbook writing before teaching to the generative nature of personalized, on-demand, and real-time teaching. The implementation of the curriculum will be based on achieving educational goals, using dynamic "customized" textbooks as the carrier, integrating teaching, learning, examination, and evaluation.

4. Personalized evaluation of exams

With the deepening of personalized education, especially with the empowerment of artificial intelligence in education, not only has the classroom teaching system been changed for hundreds of years, but it will also break the situation of thousands of people per exam. Adaptive testing has become the norm, accurately reflecting the potential level of each student. It not only provides a direct basis for talent selection, but also provides scientific guidance for students' self growth. At the same time, the empowerment of artificial intelligence will also promote the transformation of exam evaluation functions from "evaluating learning" to "promoting learning through evaluation" and then to "integrating learning and evaluation", highlighting the learner centered approach.

Article source: China Basic Education, Issue 1, 2025