Building public trust in national assessment: The example of China's NAEQ

Abstract

AbstractAfter eight years of piloting, China's National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ) was administered for the first time in 2015. The NAEQ was introduced during the country's transition from exam‐oriented to quality‐oriented education. The public, in particular parents and students, were required to subscribe to this reorientation. To ensure public support, the government introduced a range of strategies to communicate the objective of the NAEQ and how the public was expected to engage with it and trust the assessment. This study reviewed policy documents, press releases, government administrative documents, and media coverage from the Chinese Ministry of Education to explore strategies used by the government to raise the public's trust in the NAEQ. A total of 169 documents, spanning from the assessment's initial development in 2007 to 2020, were included. Findings identify three main areas of effort to increase public trust in the national assessment: (1) highlighting similarities between the NAEQ and PISA—an assessment that holds high public trust, (2) demonstrating that the NAEQ is an internationally respected assessment, and (3) specifying how the NAEQ aligns with broader aims of quality‐oriented education in China.