Research on Spatial Distribution, Accessibility and Resource Equity of Compulsory Education Schools in Megacities: A Case Study of Wuhan

The accelerated promotion of new urbanization has brought about population mobility, which has placed greater pressure on megacities in terms of inter-regional competition for high-quality resources in compulsory education and their carrying capacity. To achieve high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education, it is not only necessary to achieve a balanced allocation of resources in terms of quantity and structure, but also to pay attention to the spatial balanced distribution of quality. This study uses Wuhan, a central Chinese megacity, as a case. Integrating Point of Interest data of primary and secondary schools, educational resources, road network information, this study uses GIS methodologies, such as the nearest neighbor index, coefficient of variation, kernel density analysis, service area network analysis, and an improved 2SFCA method to evaluate the spatial distribution characteristics of compulsory education resources in Wuhan and the accessibility and resource distribution equilibrium across districts. In terms of spatial quantity equilibrium, although the distribution of primary and secondary schools in Wuhan's districts is relatively uniform, the resource density is biased towards the central urban areas and shows a single-center clustering, resulting in sparse resource distribution in the remote urban areas. In terms of spatial structural equilibrium, considering students' commuting modes, time cost and the matching of supply and demand, primary schools exhibit better accessibility and resource equilibrium than junior high schools. In terms of spatial quality equilibrium, the human, material, and financial resource allocation equilibrium of primary schools is generally better than that of junior high schools, and both primary and junior high schools in the remote urban areas are less balanced than those in the central urban areas. This imbalance in resource distribution is in conflict with the population expansion and uneven distribution in the urbanization process of Wuhan. Therefore, it is suggested that the future layout for compulsory education in Wuhan should be combined with regional functions, population size, and educational needs to strengthen the forward-looking allocation of educational resources and land use planning in the remote urban areas, optimize the educational layout of functional areas to adapt to population growth and enhance accessibility, and build a balanced system of teacher resource allocation to promote the high-quality and integrated development of compulsory education. This study builds a spatial analysis framework based on a three-dimensional perspective of 'quantity-structure-quality', which expands the research perspective of high-quality and equilibrium allocation of compulsory education resources, and the spatial accessibility analysis from the perspective of supply and demand provides methodological references for other megacities to optimize the layout and resource allocation of primary and secondary schools in different regions, and also enhances the understanding of the differentiated layout of compulsory education resources in different administrative districts of megacities.