Since the release of “4%” objective of fscal educational expenditure to GDP in 2012, the Chinese governments at all levels have frequently formulated or changed education fnance policy in light of the complex situation of China’s economic development. The policy changes have ensured the steady growth of education fnancial investment, but also brought a series of unknown or uncertain factors to the allocation of educational resources. According to the text context from the selected mainstream Chinese media in the past two decades, this study creates a newspaper-based policy uncertainty indices of China’s education fscal policy under the framework of Baker (JAMA 131(4):1593–1636, 2016)’s study. We also apply the EGARCH model to test the robustness of the results. Our fndings reveal that the uncertainty indices are highly consistent with the fuctuation of education fscal policy in various stages in China. It suggests that the government sectors should defne the reasonable boundaries of the "tangible hand" and harden the budget in the process of allocating education resources, to eliminate the negative impact brought by the uncertainty of education fscal policy. Moreover, this study puts forward the research prospect of the application of policy uncertainty in the feld of education.