Abstract: Through constructing an evaluation index system for the compulsory education, this paper adopts the factor analysis method to calculate the synthesis score of compulsory education of each province from 2004 to 2013. The results show that there exist long time gaps between their development levels of compulsory education, but the gap is reduced somewhat recently. Based on these findings, it conducts an analysis of the influencing mechanism of the fiscal decentralization on the compulsory education. The results show that such factors as fiscal expenditure decentralization, transfer payment and local financial resources have significant effects on compulsory education, but the effect direction is different. The fiscal expenditure decentralization exerts no positive effect on the compulsory education，the increase of local financial resources has promoted the development of the compulsory education, the transfer payment has a large difference in the regional effects. In order to narrow the gaps of compulsory education between different regions, it is necessary to control the degree of fiscal expenditure decentralization, establish a transformation mechanism between transfer payment and compulsory education, and especially enhance the local financial resources in backward areas.

Key words: equalization of compulsory education; factor analysis method; fiscal decentralization; local tax system