Study on Optimization of School Layout After Rural School Consolidation

With the apparent advance to urbanization and the decrease of rural school-age population, a great number of schools in rural area have been small. In order to improve the education quality of rural schools, small rural schools are merged dramatically. After the consolidation rural school, the larger quantity and small scale problems in rural area have been solved, and the economies of scale and education quality have been improved. However, many problems emerge. For example, the distance from home to school is farther, the cost of family education becomes higher, and the school management is more complex. Adopting ArcGIS, this research explores the distribution of the rural primary schools in a mountainous county of China and assesses the school distribution and the existing problems. It is found that the distribution of educational resources in Zhenyuan County is not balanced. Via Proximity analysis, one can find that some villages are far from school, the actual service areas of the school increase, and some villages are in the service blind area. In the end, recommendation is offered that schools cannot be merged at present, instead, the necessary small schools and teaching points in countryside must be set and the network analysis is conducted to offer some suggestions on school location.