Basic education is a national quality education for all students. Its fundamental purpose is to improve the quality of the whole nation and lay a solid foundation for all school-age children and adolescents to study for life and participate in social life.

Basic education plays an overall, basic and leading role in improving the quality of the Chinese nation, cultivating talents at all levels and promoting socialist modernization. Over the years, the state has insisted on the moderately advanced development of education, giving priority to the development of basic education, and ensuring it as a key area of infrastructure and education development.

In China, basic education includes preschool education (generally 3 to 5 years old), compulsory education (generally 6 to 15 years old), high school education (generally 16 to 19 years old) and literacy education.

It covers compulsory education in primary schools and junior high schools, and has the characteristics of universality, publicity and compulsion. It is a compulsory education for all school-age children and adolescents and a public welfare undertaking that the state must guarantee.

The so-called independent value of basic education means that basic education has its own independent value in the whole education system and is not attached to other types and levels of education. Establishing such basic education values is a very important conceptual basis for promoting the transformation of basic education from "exam-oriented education" to "quality education".

Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Basic Education