Greater Autonomy

Animals have been Lü Zhe’s main interest since early childhood, and he gained top marks in biology throughout middle school. When he took the Gaokao in 2002, he applied for a course at the Biology Department of China Agricultural University. As his exam score was seven points below the minimum required for admission to the Biology Department, he was offered the chance instead to enter the Department of Industrial Design. Lü pondered this unexpected opportunity for a few days. If he turned it down he would have to repeat the last year of high school and make another attempt at the Gaokao the following year, but accepting it meant forgoing his preferred major. In the end, he chose to accept the offer, but has since regretted this decision.

Fu Shenming, a high school graduate of 2011, is luckier. Fascinated with stars and the heavens, he wants to be an astronomer. A member of his high school astronomy club, Fu was a frequent stargazer after class, and regularly studied astronomical phenomena. Thanks to this special interest, in 2011 he sat and passed the Advanced Assessment for Admission (known as AAA, a pre-selection examination in addition to the Gaokao). He went on to major in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, thus coming closer to his dream.

In 2003, the Ministry of Education began exploring new ways of pinpointing talents. It allowed 22 colleges, including the prestigious Tsinghua and Peking universities, to recruit five percent of their total undergraduate enrollment independently, in efforts to find students with low Gaokao scores but specific talents. This practice was expanded to 81 colleges in 2013. The AAA Fu Shenming attended was one such independent examination.

Independent recruitment by colleges represents a major innovation to the Gaokao system. It offers colleges and universities more say in admitting candidates with particular specialties, thus diversifying their student structure. Students, meanwhile, free of the constraints of Gaokao scores, have more options and a better chance of pursuing their preferred subjects.

Since 2009, Peking University has been experimenting with a new system whereby high school principals recommend particular students to the university. It gives access to candidates with relatively low scores that have been recommended and who pass their interviews. This policy is not designed to recruit students with strong comprehensive abilities, but to discover those who are outstanding in certain aspects.

Xiang Jinggang attended one such independent interview at Peking University in December 2012. What most impressed this Hangzhou youth was that none of the questions asked at the interview had standard textbook answers. They called instead for the innate intelligence needed to work them out. In his opinion, it is not possible to give advice on how to prepare for these interviews because mistakes, as long as they are innovative, are allowed.

Qin Chunhua, head of Peking University’s admission office, said that students so recommended are tested in both general and specialized interviews, the former focusing on overall capability and the latter on competence in specific subjects. “This experimental recommendation system supplements the existing enrollment mechanism. Unlike the Gaokao, it is not targeted at top students with the highest scores. For example, the student that Beijing No. 4 High School recommended this year ranked 28th in his school. In future, Peking University will open more doors, allowing different students access to this great hall of learning,” Qin said.

Lifted Restrictions

Jiang Lihong and her husband have been migrant workers in Beijing for seven years. Their son is in his fifth year at Beijing Landianchang High School. As his household registration, or hukou, is in his native Anhui province, however, he must sit the Gaokao there rather than in Beijing. Jiang’s son has displayed average academic ability, but would have a better chance of entering college if he sat the Gaokao in Beijing, where enrollment standards are lower than in Anhui. Jiang Lihong must now decide whether or not to send her son back to Anhui to finish his high school studies.

The household registration system, which stipulates that students must take the Gaokaoin their registered place of residence, is still in force in China. As more migrant workers flow into urban areas, however, their children’s education becomes a growingly salient issue.

In fact, the Chinese government has already made endeavors to resolve this problem. In 2003, the State Council proposed that the public schools and local governments of migrant-populated regions play a major role in providing education to migrant worker children. In 2010, the state education authority took the decision to carry out reforms that would make it possible for students whose household registration is elsewhere to attend the Gaokaoin their place of temporary residence.

Shandong is one of the provinces carrying out this pilot program. In March 2012, Shandong announced that students without permanent household registration could sit the 2014 Gaokao in the area where they attended high school. As at early 2013, 30 other provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) other than Hong Kong, Macao, Tibet and Taiwan, all raised different plans to expedite this proposal. Twenty of them, including Anhui, Jiangsu and Guangxi, will make even bigger changes this year.

Unfortunately, due to its unique conditions, Beijing has only come up with a “transitional plan,” according to which Jiang Lihong’s son still does not qualify to sit the Gaokaoin Beijing next year.

Since being reinstated three decades ago, the education authorities have been constantly reforming, innovating and improving the Gaokao system. But as there is no yardstick, changes take place through experimentation and exploration and so are relatively slow. Exams, however, are still perceived by the majority as the most desired system of selecting talents. The task of the education authorities is to ensure that they are scrupulously fair and equal.