Abstract: “The pursuit of better education” has become the starting point and the foothold of education reforms in concordance with the changes in the principal contradictions our society faces in the new era,and inadequate government investment has long been regarded as the main cause for discontented education.However,the policy application and theoretical research indicate that more investment has not brought about the ideal result,which means the investment structure and its management is equally important.Based on the comprehensive analysis of the basic functions of education and its direct and indirect outputs,the empirical research shows that: first,districts with more investment may not necessarily have better education,because of the small scale or poor efficiency caused by the low education carrying capacity in these districts.By contrast,districts in rural or remote areas are facing surplus carrying capacity because of dispersed population and farther distance,which leads to high cost and serious waste of education supply.Therefore,one the one hand,we should focus on optimizing the spatial structure and providing fair and quality education by strictly limiting the scale of cities and matching the numbers of permanent residents and students in school and on the other hand,we should fully apply the requirements proposed by the 19th CPC National Congress on the rural revitalization strategy and regional coordinated development by speeding up urbanization and improving the population transfer mechanism.Second,the condition of school is the most influential factor to realize “better education” in the whole structure of education investment,which also reflects the shortcomings of one-size-fits-all standard in a new stage of compulsory education in the new era.In order to ensure the basic condition of small schools,it is necessary to speed up the formulation of the standards for small schools,and make efforts to strengthen the construction of small and boarding schools in villages.Additionally,we should strengthen the allocation of movable and most beneficial resources to ensure the comprehensive implementation of educational and teaching activities.Third,the education output is multi-faceted and comprehensive,and contradictions among different kinds of outputs may arise in reality,so we should judge which function is most desirable for “better education”.The study finds that social benefits,including school's service radius and the admissible number of students,are more important than the economic benefits.In the compulsory education,“nearby enrollment policy” is conducted for the benefits of the young aged students,which highlights the importance of the service radius and admissible number of students.Although the policy has provided the opportunity for every student to receive education,it cannot meet the people's demand for better education,and the contradiction between growing demand and the imbalanced education resources has become increasingly obvious.Whether people can enjoy the quality education resources fairly and nearly depends on the school district division,which is decided by the service radius of schools and their admissible capacity of students.

Key words: education investment, education output, better education, performance