Quality education is essentially an education aimed at improving the quality of the people. This is the stipulation of the concept of quality education in the level of educational purpose from the perspective of educational philosophy, which distinguishes quality education from other education that does not aim at improving national quality.

For example, clearly distinguish between quality education and "exam-oriented education". First, the goal of quality education is to improve the national quality; The goal of "exam-oriented education" is "teaching for exams and learning for exams". Under the guidance of this goal, even if the quality of some students can be developed at a shallow level objectively, it can only be one-sided at the expense of other aspects of development. Second, quality education aims at improving the national quality and must be geared to all students and every future citizen; "Exam-oriented education" focuses on a few students who are expected to enter higher education, ignoring most students, and even labeling normal children as "mentally retarded" so that they are not included in the score statistics. Thirdly, in order to improve the national quality, quality education emphasizes that educators should give full play to their creative spirit, design and organize scientific education and teaching activities from the reality of the school, and promote the educated to actively internalize the influence of external education into their stable physical and mental quality in their independent activities; "Examination-oriented education" makes educators follow the baton of examination step by step, and the basic characteristics of teaching methods are indoctrination, preaching and passive acceptance.