Educational idea is the rational insight into educational innate characters and the ideality and belief of it. Some educational ideas include national policy oriented ideas which guide and monitor national educational development, while other educational ideas are irrelevant of the national policy and only deal with localities', schools' and stakeholder's educational activities, so they are called non-national-policy ideas. The national policy oriented ideas are basic educational ideas pertaining to educational policy formulation and implementation, embodying national educational wills, they would affect the process of national education modernization. Since the Reform and Opening up in China, a new system of national policy oriented ideas guiding national education development has been formed, and they includes six basic educational ideas: the idea of prior development of education, the idea of human-centered education, the idea of educational equity, the idea of educational excellence, the idea of quality education, the idea of lifelong education.  The idea of prior development of education deepens the idea of emphasis of the precedence of education, and it includes four kinds of precedence such as precedence of formation of educational guideline, implementation of educational development strategies and planning, increase in financial input and enlargement of talents storage. The policy implication for the idea of prior development of education is recognizing the key function of education development in the rising of country and in strengthening national power and competitiveness. The idea of human-centered education is the embodiment of the core ideas included in scientific development viewpoints, it regards human development as the central aim of educational activities, emphasizing the meeting of both social needs and individual's needs, both individual's development and collective's development, both improvement of human happy life and enhancement of citizen's national pride and esteem. The policy implication for the idea of human-centered education focuses on guaranteeing human educational rights and benefits, meeting people's demand of learning, facilitating individual's harmonious development. The idea of educational equity is the basic requirements of actualizing social equity and justice, it denotes the equity in three aspects: educational starting point, educational process and educational outcome, and emphasizes the protection of educatees' equality of educational opportunity, the fair treatment of educatees, the equality of educatees' scholastic achievements. The policy implication for the idea of educational equity focuses on supply-centered reform, balancing educational development and popularization of fundamental education. The idea of educational excellence is the embodiment of the strategic idea that quality is the lifeline of business, it emphasizes the all-around quality and high quality, take development of core competencies and enhancement of quality as the basic educational standards. The policy implication for the idea of educational excellence focuses on implementation of policies in terms of educational quality standards, quality engineering, quality monitoring and quality assurance. The idea of quality education is a modern educational idea with salient Chinese characteristics, and it aims at correcting the drawback of examination-centered education, and it also emphasizes the all-round development of all educatees. The idea of lifelong education is a new idea, future-oriented and closely following social and technological development, and it emphasizes the transformation of traditional educational system and regards individual's lifelong learning and sustainable development as the basic educational target. The policy implication for the idea of lifelong education focuses on law-making of lifelong education, reform of educational system and change of ways of learning.  The six educational ideas have been regarded as important policy guidelines for educational reform and development .The connotation of these six educational ideas would be richened as the economic, political and cultural development speeds up in China.