An Improved Accessibility-Based Model to Evaluate Educational Equity: A Case Study in the City of Wuhan

Abstract

Limited studies focus on educational equity from the spatial accessibility perspective. This study combines survey data and big data and proposes a multi-mode Huff two-step floating catchment area (MMH2SFCA) method to calculate accessibility while considering multiple travel modes and school attractiveness. This method can also calculate education quality by extending the accessibility in each community. Results show that our proposed method can reliably identify the accessibility differences of schools across communities. The case study indicates an inequitable distribution of educational accessibility and quality. The communities with high accessibility are concentrated in the urban center and exurban zones surrounding schools, whereas high-quality areas are mainly concentrated in the urban center. Correlation analysis suggests that the educational quality of communities with high accessibility is not always high. The findings of this study can provide improvement for accessibility measurements and help explore a new research perspective for educational equity research.