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October 11, 2014

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New gaokao intended to broaden students

By Yao Min-G | October 11, 2014, Saturday | Print Edition

THE reform plan on gaokao, or the national college entrance examination, has recently been announced, and Shanghai will be among the first to implement the new policy. It will start in 2017, when the current 10th graders take the test.

To many Chinese people, it is a belated response to their gradually changing attitudes toward the exam, the college degree and generally the education system that has been criticized for many years. In the past, the highly competitive gaokao was considered the sacred exam and the only way to change life, while a college degree was almost a guarantee of success.

The frenzy over one exam that alters destiny has been a tradition since ancient times, when almost all intellectuals in the country wished to pass the imperial exam. It grew even larger in 1977, when Deng Xiaoping reinstated the long-suspended gaokao, the first policy he implemented after resuming leadership. For young Chinese, many of whom had been sent to remote villages to be “re-educated,” the exam was their ticket home.

It is no longer the only lifeline today, when around 80 percent of those who take the exam are enrolled, and many successful celebrities don’t even have a college degree. Students also face other options, such as private colleges, going abroad or studying at a foreign university’s local campus.

“For my generation, gaokao was a savoir — it was the only possible way to change our life,” says Wang Zhi, who took the exam in 1978, after it was suspended for 11 years during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76). “My son took it in the 1990s, and it was surely far less competitive than our times, but still, gaokao was described as thousands of solders marching a narrow single-log bridge — only a selected few could pass and others all fall to hell. It is very different today.

“College degrees are not as precious and gaokao is no longer the only way to get such a degree. I wouldn’t put my grandson under the same pressure that me and my son had when we were young,” Wang adds.

“The one exam that determines your life” is the common description for gaokao, which usually takes place in early June for two or three days. Students are tested in four subjects — Chinese, mathematics, English and a fourth subject of the student’s choice, from the following six — physics, chemistry, geology, biology, political science and history.

The total score of these four subjects is the sole criteria to enter a public university. In China, there are few private higher education institutions and public institutions are generally considered much better.

For years, gaokao has been cited as a major factor behind many problems. For example, many teachers employ the spoon-fed teaching method because it helps students remember a lot of information without fully understanding them, in order to get a high score in the exam.

The system is also seen as the reason behind the so-called “high IQ idiots” — students who score very high in exams but don’t even have the basic living skills like how to crack a boiled egg.

For years, education authorities have been promoting the concept of suzhi jiaoyu, literally “quality-oriented education,” an idea similar to liberal arts education where students are evaluated on comprehensive all-around qualities rather than pure test scores. However, it has largely remained a concept because it is very difficult to be implemented in a system greatly oriented toward tests.

The new plan also says the quality-oriented education will be gradually implemented with the gaokao score, but no detail has been revealed. At the moment, it will be used only as a reference to the student’s performance other than test scores.

“They say that all the time, suzhi jiaoyu, but after all, it’s all about test scores,” says Pan Lin, mother of a 10th grader, who will be among the first students to experience the new exam system. “It is the highest scorer who becomes class monitor, not the one with highest quality. How can you evaluate someone’s kindness or personality anyway? It’s a very abstract idea.”

One big change is the subject of English, which has been a mandatory subject in the college-entrance exam ever since gaokao was reinstated in 1977. Many students and parents even consider it the most important subject, and good English is often seen as a determining factor to get a high-paying job.

But in recent years, its importance has been challenged. Many education experts say language is only a tool and that many Chinese parents and students put too much focus on learning English and have only basic knowledge about Chinese.

“I’m all for this change, but unfortunately the system starts from the next grade,” says 11th grader Peter Liu. “It is more similar to America’s SAT, where you can test multiple times and only count the highest one. It helps us to be less nervous when we get another chance.”

When the reform plans started rolling out last year, there were media reports that the English exam might become optional in the new plan. However, the released plan still makes it mandatory but allows students to take the English exam twice, once in January, and the other time in June with other subjects, and only the higher score will be counted. Many see this as a transformational step that might lead to full cancelation of the exam in the future.

Another major change is to turn the current three mandatory plus one optional subject into three plus three. Students can then choose three different subjects, a move intended to broaden their interest and stop them from focusing on only one subject and ignoring the one that will not be counted into the score.

“My son’s teacher has already briefed us about the change and how the school will change the curriculum accordingly,” says mother Pan. “But so far, the change isn’t as effective as I expected. It still depends on the test scores, just of different tests.”

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