International PhD Seminar in Education | School Success, Parental Stress, and the Unintended Consequences of China’s Double Reduction Policy

The first session of the International PhD Seminar in Education in 2026 brought together researchers to examine parental and student contributions to school outcomes alongside the structural consequences of education policy reform in compulsory schooling. Two PhD candidates presented their work, followed by expert commentary and discussion.

The following researchers addressed key issues of the seminar:

Leon Britos
Institute of Education, HSE University

Parental and Child Factors in School Success: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

At the centre of Leon Britos’s doctoral project is the question of how parental and child characteristics shape school failure and success across the elementary-to-middle school transition. Framing outcomes as products of a dynamic child-family–school system, the study positions this transition — marked by new teachers, rising demands, and shifting social contexts — as a critical juncture where these forces intersect.
The research combines quantitative data from nearly 3,000 students and over 1,000 parents with qualitative interviews on how families narrate academic success and failure. Self-efficacy emerges as a strong predictor of outcomes; parental variables show more contextually dependent effects. Longitudinal data trace how these patterns shift across the transition.
Notably, the school environment itself surfaces as an independent source of parental stress at the fifth-grade transition — a dimension overlooked in child- or family-centred accounts. The study further unsettles the stress–satisfaction binary, showing both can coexist: satisfaction buffers stress through shared time with children, awareness of their progress, and a sense of growing independence.

Meijie Lyu
Lingnan University, Hong Kong

The Unintended Consequences of the “Double Reduction” Policy: Class Dynamics and Educational Pressure in China

Turning to policy, Meijie Lyu’s research investigates the unintended consequences of China’s Double Reduction policy for urban middle-class families. While the policy has curtailed the formal tutoring market, Lyu argues it has not resolved the underlying competition driving families to pursue resources outside formal schooling.
Drawing on Bourdieu’s class reproduction theory and shadow education research, the study situates parental responses within structures of inequality and competition for Gaokao-mediated access to elite universities. Restricting institutionalised tutoring, the analysis shows, does not dissolve competition but redirects it toward private, network-based, and largely invisible channels.
Based on ten snowball-sampled interviews with urban middle-class parents, the analysis identifies four mechanisms: pressure transfer from tutoring institutions to the family; the repositioning of parents as supplementary instructors; information asymmetry around hidden tutoring resources; and class-differentiated access to alternative pathways. The study concludes that the policy has redistributed rather than reduced competition, moving it from visible institutional forms into privatised, socially stratified ones.

Discussants

The session’s discussants were Ilya Denisenko (HSE University, Russia) and Jiaqi Fu (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China). For the first study, they praised the dataset’s scope and recommended stronger integration of qualitative and quantitative components, mediation modelling, and a clearer distinction between supportive and over-involved parenting. For the second, they highlighted the originality of the burden-redistribution focus and advised a more structured analytical framework, richer policy background, and engagement with the concept of education involution.