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中国的考试

The State Council, China's cabinet, has issued the most complete reform plan for schools
and college enrollment and the examination system since the resumption of the college
entrance exam (or gaokao) in 1978. The reform is aimed at exploring the correlation between
college enrollment and senior middle school education, facilitate quality education, offer
more options to and ease the exam burden on students, and promote their all-round
development.

The problem is that, although the reform is intended to ease students' burden by canceling
the exams for liberal arts and science subjects, it could turn the three-year senior middle
school studies into a period for preparation for the gaokao. In the final analysis, therefore,
it will increase students' burden.

According to the new reform plan, all gaokao candidates have to take examinations of
Chinese, mathematics and English, and choose three non-compulsory subjects. Students
also have to submit their scores in three subjects, including biology, chemistry, geography,
history, physics and politics, which they achieve throughout high school. These scores have
to be submitted along with scores for the mandatory subjects of Chinese, math and English.
Students will have the option of retaking their English proficiency test and submitting the
better score.

But such an arrangement won't change the unified system of education - the exam and
enrollment systems - and thus create two major problems:

First, basic education will remain exam oriented and students will still have to endeavor to
improve their test scores, because colleges will continue to enroll them according to their
academic scores. So, just by canceling the tests for liberal arts and science subjects, the
authorities cannot open up enough avenues for students to get all-round education.

Second, since students have to study all the subjects for which they take exams, this will
increase their burden. More importantly, if students are made to take exams for the subjects
they choose in the first or second year of their senior middle school, they will by default come
under pressure to prepare for the gaokao in advance.

The real problem lies in the enrollment system. Although the reform plan also mentions the
enrollment system, it does not shed enough light on the issue. It's good to know that there
will be independent enrollment after the gaokao since 2015. But whether or not it will break
the centralized admission system depends on how the independent enrollment system is
implemented by colleges.

We can learn a thing or two about an independent admission system from Hong Kong,
where each college has its own criterion (or criteria) to enroll students, which, in turn,
gives students the chance to seek admission to more than one college. Such a system
offers more options to colleges to choose the students they would like to admit and students
to seek out the college they want to study in.

If an independent college enrollment system only means colleges interviewing students
who have cleared the gaokao - and admitting them on the strength of their scores both in
the gaokao and interviews like some universities such as South University of Science and
Technology in Shanghai and Zhejiang University in Zhejiang province are doing - it can
hardly be described as a breakthrough.

The gaokao system reform should include the reform of the exam and admission systems
as well, with the latter being the key to the success of the overall reform of the education
system. Without a thorough reform of the admission system, the effect of reform of the exam
system would be quite limited. Over the past two decades, education reform has focused on
exam reform while preserving the centralized admission system, which can hardly be called
progress.

But it is expected that the pilot projects in Shanghai and Zhejiang would achieve substantial
progress in this direction and lead to in-depth reform of the education system.

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