In October 2019, Xinhua reported on the burden of inspections on schools. A school in Chongqing had received nearly forty inspection visits in one semester. A principal said that after a state assessment of balanced school development began in 2017, preparing for inspections had become the school’s central task. Another principal spoke of “endless inspections from above, endless summaries to write and endless forms to fill in.”
Xinhua wrote that inspections and activities unrelated to teaching had entered the schools and “overloaded the teachers and even affected teaching.”