







































 

 

 

 

 

Does Teacher Training Narrow the 

Educational Gap between Urban and 

Rural Students? Empirical  

Evidence from CEPS Baseline Data

Ran Sun, Ping Du 

 
Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Abstract. Based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel 
Survey, this paper explored the relationship between teacher training 

and academic performance in urban and rural samples respectively and 
the impact of teacher training on the urban-rural gap of students' 

academic performance. The results showed that: firstly, there was a 

significant urban-rural gap in academic performance, and the gap in 
high quantiles and language subjects were even larger. Secondly, the 

results of unconditional quantile regression showed that teacher training 

could improve the performance of urban students with different 
academic levels and rural students with intermediate or above academic 

levels, but it cannot improve the performance of rural students with 
lower academic levels. In addition, the overall effect of teacher training 

in urban areas is significantly higher than that in rural areas. Thirdly, 

different quantiles of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found that the 

endowment effect and the coefficient effect of teacher training were the 

important causes of the urban-rural performance gap, but the relative 
sizes of the two were different according to the different grades and 

different quantiles of performance distribution. Therefore, to increase 

the training opportunities and improve the training quality of rural 
teachers as well as enhance the resource conversion rate of rural 

students are of great practical significance for narrowing the urban-

rural performance gap. 

Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2021; 9(2):1243-1261. 

Doi: 10.15354/bece.21.ar036. 

How to Cite: Sun, R., & Du, P. (2021). Does teacher training narrow the 

educational gap between urban and rural students? Empirical evidence from CEPS 

baseline data. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 9(2):1243-1261. 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No.2, 2021 1244 

Keywords: Teacher Training, Urban-Rural Gap, Unconditional Quantile 

Regression, Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

About the Author: Ran Sun, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. E-mail: 
ransunsunny@163.com  
Correspondence to: Ping Du, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. E-mail: 
duping868@sina.com  

Conflict of Interests: None. 
 

© 2021 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. 

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative 

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) 

which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the 

original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. 

mailto:ransunsunny@163.com
mailto:duping868@sina.com


Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1245 

Introduction 

HE development of China’s compulsory education has achieved remarkable 

results. However, the academic development of rural students still lags behind 

that of urban students (Zhu, Li & Song, 2017; Peng, 2014; Qi & Zheng, 2019). 

Access to education is dependent on the path (Chen, 2008). The gap in the compulsory 

education stage will cause huge differences in the enrollment rate and academic devel-

opment of urban and rural students in the subsequent learning stage (Zheng, Sun & Lu, 

2019; Zhang, 2019), and ultimately affect the overall level of social human capital ac-

cumulation (Wang et al., 2018). Therefore, it is crucial to reveal the reasons behind the 

gap in academic development of urban and rural students in the compulsory education 

stage. Studies have pointed out that the quality of rural teachers is much lower than that 

of urban teachers is the key reason for the gap between urban and rural students’ aca-

demic development (Qi & Zheng, 2019; Zong et al., 2018). Therefore, the Chinese gov-

ernment has invested a lot of resources in extensive teacher training programs to im-

prove the overall quality of rural teachers. So, does rural teacher training really improve 

the quality of rural education and thereby narrow the gap with urban education devel-

opment? In this paper, based on the CEPS baseline survey data, we used unconditional 

quantile regression and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technology to explore the above 

problems. 

Literature Review 

The Relationship between Teacher Training and Stu-

dent Academic Development 

Studies have found that on-the-job training can help teachers improve their teaching 

practice (Ross & Bruce, 2007), and enhance their sense of self-efficacy (Liu, Ma & 

Kang, 2020), thereby improving their professional development level and students’ ac-

ademic performance. For example, Angrist and Lavy (2001) pointed out that in 1995 

several public schools in Jerusalem received an education and training fund dedicated to 

improving teachers’ reading, math, and English teaching skills, while teachers in other 

schools were not subject to this project. Based on this, they used the technique of dou-

ble difference to find that teacher training could improve the mathematics and reading 

performance of elementary school students. In addition, the authors believed that teach-

er training is more cost-effective for improving student performance than adjusting 

class size or teaching hours. Zhou and Yang (2019) used CEPS data to find that China’s 

rural teacher training improves students’ academic performance, and the above-

mentioned positive effects were more pronounced among boys and lower-grade stu-

dents. 

Nevertheless, some studies based on randomized controlled trials, quasi-

experimental design, and training program evaluation have found that teacher training 

T 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1246 

has no significant effect on student performance. For example, Jacob and Lefgren (2004) 

used the breakpoint regression method for the educational reform implemented by the 

Chicago Public School System in 1996
1
 and found that teacher training had no obvious 

effect on improving the mathematics and reading performance of primary school stu-

dents. Moreover, this result exists steadily among students of different abilities, genders, 

races, and family incomes. However, the authors believed that the target group of this 

educational reform was schools with high levels of poverty and extremely backward 

student academic development, and the lack of structure and poor quality of training 

activities may be the reasons for the ineffectiveness of training. Zhang, Lai and Pang 

(2013) conducted a randomized controlled trial of training intervention for English 

teachers in schools for children of migrant workers in Beijing. The results showed that 

short-term and high-intensity on-the-job training had no significant impact on the teach-

ing level of English teachers and the English performance of students. By evaluating the 

effectiveness of large-scale rural teacher training programs in China, Loyalka et al. 

(2019) found that teachers’ knowledge and teaching habits, students’ academic perfor-

mance, psychological factors in specific subjects, or dropout behavior are not affected 

by this training project. 

Furthermore, most of the existing studies reveal the relationship between 

teacher training and student academic development in an average sense. The key as-

sumption is that there is no difference in the effect of teacher training for students with 

better and poorer grades in the class (Lounkeaw, 2013). However, students with poor 

grades tend to learn passively, while students with excellent grades learn more actively 

(Qing, 2009). Then when participating in training squeezes the time allocation of teach-

ers in teaching, preparing lessons, and tutoring students (Zhou & Yang, 2019), the per-

formance of students with poor grades may further decline and it is more difficult to 

benefit from teacher training, while students with good grades are more likely to benefit 

from teacher training. May be undisturbed and benefit from teacher training. Therefore, 

in the sense of super-average, it is still worth in-depth to reveal the relationship between 

teacher training and student academic development more accurately. 

The Training Status of Urban and Rural Teachers 

Since the 21st century, China’s teacher training has made great progress (Pang et al., 

2020). However, practical problems still exist in the training of rural teachers, such as 

lack of training funds and opportunities, formalized training process and low quality of 

training (Zhao & Xie, 2019). 

On the one hand, a large number of rural schools are experiencing inadequate 

implementation of teacher training funding guarantee policies, which to a certain extent 

limits the training opportunities for rural teachers. For example, a number of national 

and regional surveys have shown that many rural schools have not fully implemented 

the requirement that 5% of the public funds for elementary and middle school teachers 

should be used for teacher training (Wu & Qin, 2020; Ministry of Education of China, 

2019). On the other hand, the training activities received by rural teachers may be of 

poor quality, lack of appropriate training content, difficult to meet the characteristics of 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1247 

rural schools, and out of touch with their professional development needs (Pang et al., 

2020; Chen & Wang, 2013). Therefore, the training opportunities and quality of rural 

teachers may not be as good as urban teachers. If it can be proved that teacher training 

has a boosting effect on students’ academic development, we have reason to speculate 

that the gap in training opportunities and training quality between urban and rural 

teachers may be an important reason for the gap in the academic development of Chi-

nese urban and rural students. 

Based on the above literature review, we proposed the following hypotheses to 

be verified: 

Hypothesis 1: The academic development of rural students lags behind that of 

urban students significantly. 

Hypothesis 2: Teacher training has a boosting effect on students’ academic de-

velopment, but this effect is heterogeneous among students with different academic 

foundations. 

Hypothesis 3: The gap in teacher training between urban and rural areas is an 

important reason for the differences in student performance between urban and rural 

areas. 

Research Design 

Data Sources 

The data comes from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) implemented by the 

China Survey and Data Center of Renmin University of China from 2013 to 2014. The 

CEPS was a large-scale follow-up survey project with national representativeness. Tak-

ing the two cohorts of the seventh and ninth grades as the starting point for the survey, 

28 counties (districts), 112 schools, 438 classes, and 19,487 students were randomly 

selected across China as the survey subjects. It collected information on family and 

school resources, teacher training status, students’ academic performance, and basic 

characteristics of students, families and schools, which meet our research needs. After 

deleting a small number of invalid samples and samples with missing values in key var-

iables, the subsequent analysis of the student sample size is 10,628, including 5,743 

urban samples and 4,885 rural samples. 

Variable Selection 

 Urban-Rural Variables 

Based on the information provided by the principal’s questionnaire, we defined schools 

located in the central city, fringe urban areas, and urban-rural junctions of cit-

ies/counties as “urban schools”, and schools located in towns and rural areas as “rural 

schools”. In Table 1, there are 3,065, 2,487, 2,678, and 2,398 students in seventh grade 

urban students, seventh grade rural students, ninth grade urban students, and ninth grade 

rural students, respectively. 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1248 

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Main Variables. 

Dimension Variable Name 

Seventh Grade Ninth Grade 

City 
Sample 

Rural 
Sample 

Mean 
Difference 

City 
Sample 

Rural 
Sample 

Mean 
Difference 

Independent 

variable 

Teacher training fre-
quency 

22.973 15.545 7.428*** 20.501 15.844 4.658*** 

Dependent 

variable 

Cognitive performance 
weighted language 
performance 

45.535 35.754 9.781*** 45.254 35.595 9.659*** 

Cognitive performance 
weighted mathematics 
performance 

39.418 31.922 7.496*** 39.245 31.624 7.620*** 

Cognitive performance 
weighted English per-
formance 

46.946 38.241 8.705*** 46.644 38.617 8.027*** 

Student level 

Face variable 

Student gender 0.528 0.532 0.004 0.502 0.490 0.012 

Is it an only child 0.524 0.263 0.261*** 0.549 0.271 0.278*** 

Have you received 
preschool education 

0.843 0.743 0.100*** 0.816 0.727 0.089*** 

Cognitive performance 44.021 39.069 4.952*** 45.719 37.743 7.976*** 

Family layer 

Face variable 

Family financial situa-
tion-Poor 

16.25% 28.31% / 15.23% 25.38% / 

Family financial status-
Average 

76.74% 67.42% / 77.91% 70.41% / 

Family financial status-
Rich 

7.00% 4.27% / 6.86% 4.20% / 

Maximum years of 
education for parents 

11.563 9.689 1.874*** 11.414 9.344 2.070*** 

School level 

Face variable 

School Ranking-
Medium and below 

15.08% 29.25% / 13.00% 28.78% / 

School Ranking-Upper 
Middle 

50.70% 70.75% / 48.59% 71.22% / 

School Ranking-Best 34.22% 0 / 38.41% 0 / 

Proportion of under-
graduate teachers 

0.808 0.668 0.139*** 0.813 0.648 0.165*** 

Proportion of teachers 
graduated from normal 
majors or colleges 

0.897 0.875 0.022*** 0.897 0.857 0.040*** 

Sample size 3,065 2,487 / 2,678 2,398 / 

Note: *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01. Except for the variables of “family economic status” and “school ranking” which 
are in percentage form, other variables are in mean value form. 

 

 

 

 Student Performance 

The dependent variables were the students’ Chinese, math, and English scores. In order 

to increase the comparability of academic performance in different schools and regions, 

we used the regional and school-comparable student cognitive performance data col-

lected by the CEPS project team. First, generate the school-level average cognitive per-

formance index, then weight the students’ performance in the school, and finally obtain 

the variables of the three science achievements. In Table 1, in the sample of students in 

the two grades, the average scores of rural students were significantly lower than those 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1249 

of urban students; in terms of subject, the gap was the largest in Chinese, followed by 

English, and the smallest in mathematics. 

 Teacher Training 

The core explanatory variable was teacher training. It came from the frequency infor-

mation of various teacher training conducted by schools provided by the principal ques-

tionnaire, which was a continuous variable. Table 1 shows that the frequency of teacher 

training in rural areas was significantly lower than that in urban areas. 

 Control Variable 

This study contains three groups of control variables at the student level, family level 

and school level. Student-level variables included gender (0 = female, 1 = male), only 

child (0 = no, 1 = yes), preschool education (0 = no, 1 = yes), and student cognitive test 

scores. Family-level variables included family economic status (1 = poverty, 2 = aver-

age, 3 = abundant) and the parent’s highest level of education. School-level variables 

included school rankings (1 = medium and below, 2 = upper-middle, 3 = best), the pro-

portion of teachers with a bachelor’s degree, and the proportion of teachers who gradu-

ated from teachers’ colleges or majors. Table 1 shows that compared with urban stu-

dents, the proportion of only-children, the proportion of preschool education and cogni-

tive performance among rural students were significantly lower; parents’ educational 

level was significantly lower; family economic conditions were generally worse; 

schools ranked lower; the proportion of teachers with a bachelor’s degree and the pro-

portion of teachers who graduated from teachers’ majors or colleges were significantly 

lower. 

Research Methodology 

Unconditional Quantile Regression 

To investigate the impact of teacher training on the performance of urban and rural stu-

dents at different points of student performance distribution, we adopted Unconditional 

Quantile Regression (UQR) to conduct research. Following is an example of Chinese 

score. UQR mainly uses the re-centered influence function (RIF) of distribution statis-

tics for data conversion (Firpo, Fortin & Lemieux, 2009). For the unconditional quantile 

(Qτ) of the dependent variable student’s Chinese score, FScore(Qτ)=τ0fScore(Qτ) is the 

marginal density function of the student’s score distribution, and I(•) is the indicator 

function. Its RIF can be recorded as: 

 

                 
             

          
  (1) 

 

The average value of RIF is equal to the corresponding target statistic, namely 

E[RIF(Score,Qτ)|X]=Qτ(Score). Then the marginal effect of UQR is expressed as: 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1250 

 

         
                   

  
     (2) 

 

UQR can be regressed on any quantile. Due to space limitations, the follow-up 

analysis only presents the estimated results of the effect of teacher training on urban and 

rural student performance at the 30th, 50th, and 70th points of the student performance 

distribution. 

Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition 

With the help of OB decomposition (Blinder, 1973; Oaxaca, 1973), we focused on the 

decomposition of the performance gap between urban and rural students in teacher 

training. We take the Chinese score as an example to detail the decomposition process. 

∆ is the urban-rural gap of students’ language performance, and its OB decomposition 

form is as follows: 

 

                                                            

(3) 

 

    and     represent the average level of teacher training frequency in the urban 

sample and the rural sample, respectively,     and     represent the estimated value of 

the coefficient when the urban sample and the rural sample are used to estimate the in-

fluence of teacher training on student performance. Therefore, the difference in the av-

erage Chinese performance of urban and rural students can be attributed to two parts: 

one part is due to the difference in the mean of teacher training frequency between ur-

ban and rural students, namely (   -   )•   , also known as the endowment effect; the 

other part The difference between the estimated coefficients derived from teacher train-

ing affecting the performance of urban and rural students, namely (   -   )•    , is also 

called the coefficient effect. 

The endowment effect and coefficient effect of teacher training correspond to 

different policy improvement ideas. The significant endowment effect indicates that the 

urban-rural gap in teacher training opportunities is an important reason for the urban-

rural gap in student performance; then follow-up policies need to increase the training 

opportunities for rural teachers in order to narrow the urban-rural education gap. A sig-

nificant coefficient effect indicates that the urban-rural gap between teacher training 

quality and student resource conversion rate is an important reason for the urban-rural 

gap in student performance; then follow-up policies need to improve the quality of rural 

teacher training and the resource conversion rate of rural students to achieve education-

al balance. 

 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1251 

 

Figure 1. The Distribution of Chinese Scores of Urban and Rural Students in 

Seventh Graders. 

 

 

Figure 2. Distribution of Mathematics Scores of Urban and Rural Students in 

Seventh Graders. 

 

 

Figure 3. Distribution of English Scores of Urban and Rural Students in Sev-

enth Graders. 

 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1252 

 

Figure 4. The Distribution of Chinese Scores of Ninth Grade Urban and Rural 

Students. 

 

 

Figure 5. Distribution of Mathematics Scores of Urban and Rural Students in 

Ninth Graders. 

 

 

Figure 6. The Distribution of English Scores of Ninth Grade Urban and Rural 

Students. 

 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1253 

 

Figure 7. The Urban-Rural Gap in the Performance of Seventh Grade Students 

at Different Quantile. 

 

 

 

Figure 8. The Urban-Rural Gap between Grade Nine Students at Different 

Quantile. 

 

 

 

 

Results 

The Status Quo of the Gap between Urban and Rural 

Students’ Performance 

This section reveals the performance distribution of urban and rural students (Figures 1 

to 6) and the performance gap between urban and rural students at different points of 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1254 

the performance distribution (Figures 7 and 8). The data shows that in the two grades, 

compared with urban students, the distribution of the three subjects of rural students is 

significantly leftward, indicating those rural students’ performance in Chinese, mathe-

matics, and English lags behind that of urban students as a whole. So, the hypothesis 1 

was confirmed. 

At the same time, the urban-rural gap in student performance at different 

quantile showed similar characteristics in both grades. As follows: First, urban students 

at different quantile have significantly higher scores in Chinese, mathematics, and Eng-

lish than the corresponding rural students. Second, the performance gap between urban 

and rural students presents a “ceiling effect”, that is, with the increase of the quintile, 

the urban and rural gaps in the three subject performances of students have shown a 

significant expansion trend. Third, there is subject heterogeneity in the degree of the 

urban-rural gap in student performance; the gap between urban and rural students in 

different quantile in language subjects (Chinese and English) is generally greater than 

the gap in mathematics. These findings indicated that the performance gap between ur-

ban and rural students is more mainly reflected in the student groups with good perfor-

mance and language subjects. Therefore, it is extremely important to examine the dif-

ferences in the impact of teacher training on urban and rural student performance in 

different disciplines and different points of student performance distribution. 

The Influence of Teacher Training on Student Perfor-

mance in Urban and Rural Areas 

This section used UQR technology to estimate the effect of teacher training on students’ 

Chinese, mathematics, and English performance at different points of the score distribu-

tion in samples of all students, urban students, and rural students. The results are shown 

in Table 2. 

Based on the full sample, the following results appeared robustly in different 

grades and different subjects: Students with different quantile of performance distribu-

tion have improved their academic performance due to teacher training, and with the 

increase of quantile, the effect of teacher training on student performance continued to 

increase. The possible reason is that, compared with students with poor performance, 

those with good performance generally performed better in learning habits and abilities 

characterized by learning initiative, participation, and interest. Moreover, the resource 

conversion rate of the various element inputs they face was higher (Jiang, 2017). When 

being taught by teacher training at the same time, students with good performance are 

better able to absorb and internalize the teaching improvement obtained through train-

ing into higher academic performance, and thus get more benefits from teacher training. 

Next, we subdivided the sample of urban and rural students. The results 

showed that among urban students, teacher training benefited all students, but the de-

gree of benefit varied with the difference in student performance. Specifically, com-

pared with students with lower-middle grades, students with middle and above grades 

have achieved a greater degree of improvement in performance due to teacher training. 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1255 

Table 2. UQR Estimation Results of the Effect of Teacher Training on Student 
Performance. 

    Full Sample Urban Sample Rural Sample 

    Q30 Q50 Q70 Q30 Q50 Q70 Q30 Q50 Q70 

Chinese 7
th
 

Grader 

0.042 
*** 

0.111 
*** 

0.159 
*** 

0.117 
*** 

0.205 
*** 

0.147 
*** 

0.012 0.168 
*** 

0.122 
*** 

(9.23) (25.90) (18.48) (16.95) (32.01) (13.75) (0.80) (9.54) (8.58) 

9
th
 

Grader 

0.022 
*** 

0.123 
*** 

0.177 
*** 

0.134 
*** 

0.203 
*** 

0.233 
*** 

-0.063 
*** 

0.119 
*** 

0.123 
*** 

(3.76) (22.91) (17.96) (13.49) (22.64) (19.23) (-4.76) (7.22) (7.79) 

Math 7
th
 

Grader 

0.044 
*** 

0.075 
*** 

0.133 
*** 

0.082 
*** 

0.155 
*** 

0.137 
*** 

-0.012 0.068 
*** 

0.056 
*** 

(11.35) (25.99) (18.10) (16.85) (28.53) (14.32) (-0.82) (6.37) (6.39) 

9
th
 

Grader 

0.032 
*** 

0.068 
*** 

0.131 
*** 

0.080 
*** 

0.143 
*** 

0.192 
*** 

-0.045 
*** 

0.057 
*** 

0.056 
*** 

(7.27) (22.67) (16.16) (15.37) (20.59) (15.23) (-3.41) (5.25) (6.43) 

English 7
th
 

Grader 

0.049 
*** 

0.090 
*** 

0.143 
*** 

0.094 
*** 

0.157 
*** 

0.167 
*** 

-0.046 
*** 

0.087 
*** 

0.075 
*** 

(11.17) (26.02) (18.39) (16.06) (24.93) (14.68) (-3.06) (7.36) (6.69) 

9
th
 

Grader 

0.023 
*** 

0.080 
*** 

0.145 
*** 

0.087 
*** 

0.165 
*** 

0.167 
*** 

-0.031 
** 

0.046 
*** 

0.060 
*** 

(5.75) (22.72) (18.75) (13.90) (23.51) (12.58) (-2.41) (4.99) (6.29) 

Note: * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. The T value is in parentheses. Each coefficient in the table comes from an 
independent model. Due to space limitations, the estimated results of the control variables are not presented in the 

table. 

 

 

 

 

The above results robustly exist in different grades and different subjects, and are simi-

lar to the estimated results based on the sample of all students. 

In the sample of rural students, teacher training can only benefit students with 

intermediate and above grades. Students with intermediate and lower grades cannot be 

improved by teacher training. What’s more, students with poor grades in the ninth grade 

will have a significant decline in all three subjects due to teacher training. This is be-

cause rural students with low-to-middle grades are the worst-developed group in Chi-

na’s entire education system. They generally lack learning initiative, and the learning 

process is more dependent on the teacher’s constant supervision (Qing, 2009). However, 

training may bring conflicts between working and teaching to teachers, reduce the time 

allocation for teaching and class preparation, and the attention and urge to students. In 

the end, the academic performance of students with low grades is difficult to benefit 

from teacher training. For urban students at the lower-middle level, their academic per-

formance, learning ability and habits are generally better than those of the correspond-

ingly ranked students in rural areas; in addition, the parents of urban students are more 

likely to have higher education levels and educational participation levels; and therefore, 

the children can be guided after class, and ultimately they have not been negatively af-

fected by teacher training. Therefore, the negative relationship between teacher training 

and student performance is mainly reflected in the rural student groups with poor per-



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1256 

formance. In fact, Jacob and Lefgren (2004) based on data from USA schools that are 

highly impoverished and whose student performance was extremely low, found that 

teacher training could not improve student performance, and the results would not 

change due to differences in students’ previous academic foundation. This finding bet-

ter supports the reliability of the conclusions of this study for rural student groups with 

poor performance. 

Further, horizontally compare the urban-rural gap in the effect of teacher train-

ing on the improvement of student performance. The results found that in different 

grades and different disciplines, the effect of improving the performance of rural stu-

dents due to teacher training was significantly smaller than that of urban students; this 

phenomenon steadily exists at different quantile of the distribution of student perfor-

mance. There are two possible explanations for this. (i) The training opportunities and 

quality of rural teachers are not as good as that of urban teachers. (ii) Compared with 

urban students, rural students have a poorer academic foundation and ability; therefore, 

the resource conversion rate is lower. These all may limit the effectiveness of teacher 

training in rural areas. 

In sum, teacher training could help improve the academic performance of urban 

students with different performance levels and rural students with middle and above 

performance levels. However, it could not bring a positive impact on rural students with 

lower-middle performance levels. In addition, the performance improvement effect of 

urban teacher training was higher than the corresponding effect of rural teachers. So far, 

Hypothesis 2 has been confirmed. Therefore, it can be speculated that the urban-rural 

gap in teacher training will cause the gap in academic performance of urban and rural 

students. 

The Influence of Teacher Training on the Achievement 

Gap between Urban and Rural Students 

This section used both UQR and OB decomposition techniques. Decomposes the per-

formance gap between urban and rural students, and mainly presents the explanation 

strength of the urban-rural gap in teacher training. The results are shown in Table 3. 

The decomposition results of the seventh grade showed that in different sub-

jects and different quantile, teacher training could explain the urban-rural gap in student 

performance to a certain extent. As the quantile increases, the explanatory power of the 

endowment effect of teacher training showed a trend of first increasing and then de-

creasing, but the fluctuation range was relatively slow and always maintained above 

10%. At the same time, the explanatory power of the coefficient effect of teacher train-

ing decreased rapidly from more than 20% of the low quantile to less than 10% of the 

high quantile. 

Furthermore, comparing the relative importance of the two effects of teacher 

training at different quantile of performance distribution, it is found that: (i) For urban 

and rural students whose performance is below average, the performance gap could eas-

ily be explained by the coefficient effect of teacher training; (ii) For urban and rural 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1257 

Table 3. Decomposition Results of Teacher Training on the Urban-Rural Gap 
in Student Performance. 

      Seventh Grade Ninth Grade 

      Q30 Q50 Q70 Q30 Q50 Q70 

Chinese Endowment 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

0.935*** 1.629*** 1.101*** 0.636*** 0.958*** 1.060*** 

Percentage 12.05% 18.49% 10.25% 7.08% 8.91% 9.90% 

Coefficient 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

1.724*** 0.948*** 0.380 3.098*** 1.497*** 1.760*** 

Percentage 22.21% 10.76% 3.54% 34.48% 13.92% 16.44% 

Math Endowment 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

0.641*** 1.147*** 1.041*** 0.387*** 0.647*** 0.893*** 

Percentage 11.42% 19.75% 12.00% 6.18% 10.35% 10.71% 

Coefficient 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

1.531*** 1.336*** 0.877*** 1.963*** 1.363*** 1.949*** 

Percentage 27.28% 23.00% 10.11% 31.33% 21.81% 23.38% 

English Endowment 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

0.742*** 1.201*** 1.252*** 0.425*** 0.758*** 0.778*** 

Percentage 12.02% 17.49% 11.36% 8.28% 11.30% 8.86% 

Coefficient 
effect 

Estimated 
Value 

2.239*** 1.104*** 1.014*** 1.945*** 1.873*** 1.422*** 

Percentage 36.28% 16.08% 9.20% 37.88% 27.92% 16.20% 

Notes: (1) the above decomposition process also control the variables at the school level, the family level variables and 

school level variables, space is limited, the results are not eleven out . (2) The endowment effect percentage in the table 
refers to the ratio of the explanatory strength of the endowment effect of teacher training to the explanatory strength of 
the endowment effect of all variables included in the model, and the coefficient effect percentage refers to the explana-
tory strength of the coefficient effect of teacher training and the model includes The ratio of explanatory strengths of the 
coefficient effects of all variables. 

 

 

 

 

students with intermediate and above grades, their performance gap was suitable to be 

explained by the endowment effect of teacher training. Similarly, the decomposition 

results of the ninth grade showed that both endowment and coefficient effect of teacher 

training in different subjects and different quantile could explain the urban-rural gap in 

student performance to a certain extent. But relatively, the explanatory strength of the 

coefficient effect always dominated at different quantile. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 is 

confirmed. 

In addition, comparing the results of the seventh and ninth grades, we found 

that the greater urban-rural gap in the performance of ninth grade students was ex-

plained by the coefficient effect of teacher training, and the explanatory effect of the 

endowment effect of teacher training was relatively small. If the coefficient effect of 

teacher training was understood as the difference in the efficiency of urban and rural 

students’ conversion of the positive effects of teacher training into their own perfor-

mance improvement, it meant that the resource conversion rate of rural students was 

lower than that of urban students. The possible explanation is that capacity formation is 

cumulative. As the grade increases, the differences in the accumulation of learning 

foundation in the early stage are gradually showed up, and will affect the subsequent 

academic development. 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1258 

The above results indicated that the training frequency of rural teachers was 

significantly lower than that of urban teachers; the efficiency of transforming rural 

teacher training into student performance was not as efficient as the corresponding situ-

ation in the city; these were the potential reasons why rural students’ academic perfor-

mance significantly lags behind urban students. In fact, the training frequency of urban 

teachers in grade seven (22.973 times) was significantly higher than that of rural teach-

ers (15.545 times). The training frequency of urban teachers in grade 9 (20.501 times) 

was significantly higher than that of rural teachers (15.844 times). Moreover, the con-

version rate of teacher training was comprehensively affected by the quality of training 

and the ability of students. Therefore, in order to reduce the performance gap between 

urban and rural students, it is necessary to increase the training opportunities for rural 

teachers, improve the quality of rural teacher training, and improve the early learning 

ability of rural students. In order to achieve a balanced development of urban and rural 

education and ensure the quality of teachers’ inputs, the family’s inputs, which are 

closely related to the formation of students’ abilities, cannot be ignored. 

Conclusion and Suggestion 

Based on CEPS data, this study examined the relationship between teacher training and 

student performance and its impact on the urban-rural gap in student performance. We 

found that: First, in the entire academic performance distribution, rural students lagged 

behind that of urban students, and this gap was more obvious at high quantile and in 

language subjects. Second, teacher training helped improve the performance of students 

with different academic levels in cities and rural students with middle and above levels, 

but it could not improve the performance of rural students with middle and below levels. 

In addition, the overall effect of teacher training on urban students was significantly 

higher than that of rural students. Third, the urban-rural gap in teacher training ex-

plained the urban-rural gap in student performance distribution to a certain extent. The 

endowment effect and coefficient effect of teacher training were both important reasons 

for the urban-rural gap in student performance, but the relative size of the two varied 

with grades and academic performance. Therefore, the findings of this study have en-

lightenment to formulate education policies that narrow the development gap between 

urban and rural students. 

First, innovate and improve rural teacher training policies and systems, and 

provide rural teachers with more high-quality training activities. This study found that 

only when rural teachers obtain the “dual guarantee” of training opportunities and quali-

ty, can they contribute to the balanced development of urban and rural education. How-

ever, in reality, many rural schools had not fully implemented the teacher training fund-

ing guarantee policy, which limited the frequency of rural teacher training (Chen & 

Wang, 2013). Some rural teachers reported that the training content was too theoretical, 

the teaching format was superficial, and the guiding role was very limited (Pang, et al., 

2020). Therefore, it is necessary to fully implement the provisions on the proportion of 

rural school teacher training funds to public funds; increase financial support for rural 

teacher training projects; and provide rural teachers with more training opportunities. 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1259 

Meanwhile, training activities should effectively address the characteristics of rural 

schools and teachers, and increase the training of local knowledge and the psychologi-

cal problems of rural left-behind children and their ability to improve the applicability 

of training. 

Second, effectively strengthen parental participation and popularize rural pre-

school education to help rural students lay a solid academic foundation and increase 

their resource conversion rate. We found that the coefficient effect of teacher training 

could significantly explain the performance gap between urban and rural students at 

different quantile of the distribution of student performance in different grades. To a 

certain extent, it reflected that the resource conversion rate of rural students was signifi-

cantly behind that of urban students, which was an essential reason why they have been 

behind urban students for a long time. The disadvantage of rural students in the resource 

conversion rate is caused by the students’ poor academic foundation, lack of family 

resources and low level of parental participation. Therefore, in the short term, school 

administrators should encourage “family and pre-school education together”, especially 

emphasizing, accepting and guiding the participation of parents of students with poor 

academic performance. In the long run, education reform needs to pay attention to the 

importance of early education for rural students. Popularize rural preschool education, 

extend the period of rural preschool education, improve the quality of care and educa-

tion, and ensure that rural students have a solid knowledge reserve to improve the effi-

ciency of their resource input conversion. 

Finally, for student groups with different characteristics, differentiated teacher 

training intervention programs need to be adopted to more effectively narrow the urban-

rural education gap. This study found that for students with middle and above levels in 

the lower grades, the part of the performance gap explained by the teacher training en-

dowment effect was greater than the explanatory power of the coefficient effect. The 

opposite was true for senior students and students whose grades are below average. 

Therefore, for the former type of rural students, teachers can directly provide more 

high-quality training opportunities, and at the same time, gradually increase the stu-

dent’s resource conversion rate. For the latter type of rural students, before increasing 

the frequency of high-quality teacher training, it is more necessary to focus on improv-

ing the student’s resource conversion rate. The above-mentioned differentiated teacher 

training intervention programs can bring more obvious effects to improving the educa-

tion gap between urban and rural areas. In addition, senior rural students with poor per-

formance may be negatively affected by teacher training, which reduces teaching time 

or loses teacher supervision. And they are at the critical stage of the entrance examina-

tion, so they can make full use of the network platform and innovate training models 

under the current background of “Internet + education” to improve the time efficiency 

of these teachers’ participation in training. 

 

Note: 

1. In 1996, according to the standard that the proportion of students meeting the national reading 

standard in schools was less than 15%, CPS selected 71 elementary schools out of 489 elemen-

tary schools for intervention. Its main purpose is to provide these schools with professional funds 



Sun & Du. Teacher Training in Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students. 

BECE, Vol.9, No. 2, 2021 1260 

for teacher training and enhancement of teacher professional development. 

  

 

 

 

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4519.2018.06.004711  

 

 

 

Received: 11 October 2021 

Revised: 30 October 2021 

Accepted: 05 November 2021 

 

 

The Chinese version of this article has been published in Education Economy, 2021, 37(2):47-57. The 

English version has been authorized for being publication in BECE by the author(s) and the Chinese 

journal. 

孙冉, 杜屏. (2021). 教师培训能缩小城乡学生的学业差距吗?——来自 CEPS 基线数据的经验证
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	OriginalArticle-RanSun--BECE_MaintextDec2021

