Recognizing the critical elements that promote improvement of a country's education level (here, the mean number of years of education) is a necessary prerequisite for developing policies and plans to promote the long-term development of education and the people's quality of life. By identifying the factors that constrain the development of education and the strength of each factor's influence, we aimed to provide theoretical support and practical suggestions for advancing the development of education in China and other countries. We collected data related to China's education sector from 2000 to 2019, identified the key factors driving the per capita number of years of education of Chinese nationals, quantified their degree of influence on education, and investigated the association of each factor with the per capita education in different regions using sub-regional regression and geographic and time-weighted regression models. We found that per capita GDP, education funding, and urbanization promoted educational attainment, whereas allowing the student–teacher ratio to increase decreased educational attainment. Therefore, promoting the development of education requires that the government take measures to promote economic and social development, increase the financial investment in education, and train more high-quality teachers who can work in regions that currently lack sufficient teachers. In addition, the existence of regional heterogeneity means that both central and local governments must fully account for local realities when they formulate education policies and tailor them to local conditions.