World

Don't fail the Gaokao

China's annual test for school-leavers lasts three days—and can make or break you

June 10, 2016
A Chinese student is greeted by a relative after taking the annual college entrance examinations in Beijing ©Muhammed Muheisen/AP/Press Association Images
A Chinese student is greeted by a relative after taking the annual college entrance examinations in Beijing ©Muhammed Muheisen/AP/Press Association Images
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When Tony Blair said “education, education, education” he could have been describing the mindset of the average Chinese parent. Anyone from a Chinese family, whether living abroad or in China, is likely to tell you a story of growing up with the notion that “studying” is the only way to future success. The country’s culture has long fostered the idea that working hard and excelling at exams is the only way forward. This is not questioned.

The exam to end all exams in China is the annual Gaokao—also known as the college Entrance Exam. The test is a pre-requisite for entrance onto almost all undergraduate courses in China. This year, an exam that lasted three days, ending on Wednesday, was hailed as “the strictest” Gaokao since the exam’s revival in 1977, after the Cultural Revolution. Anecdotes and chatter online about it continue to flood social media. The grand occasion for this year saw roadworks stopped near test centres so that pupils could have quiet, and metal detectors brought out in order to detect equipment that might be brought in to help candidates cheat in their exams. Also newly implemented: penalties up to seven years in jail for those who get caught cheating or assisting it. Such measures indicate just how high the cost—or perceived cost—of doing badly in the Gaokao can be.

The Gaokao is the modern equivalent of the imperial examinations that once selected candidates for China’s civil service and began informally 2000 years ago. Doing well in the exam could really mean the difference between toiling the fields for life, and a status as a government official in the city. It lifted children of peasants out of hardship and poverty.

Today, while increasingly few farmers still toil fields, and while the Gaokao is not a direct propeller into a government office, it is still widely seen and promoted by the State as an equal opportunities ladder that is the upholder of social mobility.

It’s true that many have benefited from the Gaokao system. Plenty of people around me will attest to it, including a family friend who is vice-principal at one of the top universities in China. The friend in question told me that his score on the Gaokao allowed him to go to a good ranking university despite his rural background—and subsequently paved the way for his success today.

However, the Gaokao is far from fair in its current state and is an area recognised as requiring greater reforms. Instead of a system where universities set a student quota as well as admission mark, university admissions operate on a province-by-province case. Exam marks can differ as much as 100 points (around 15-20 per cent of total) between provinces. While students from resource-sparse regions such as Xinjiang Autonomous region need to score significantly less in the Gaokao for admission than students from other provinces, the system on the whole favours those from the richest cities.

Universities usually offer local students—those with a local hukou, or permanent residence—a lower admission mark; as well more places. It’s one reason why a Beijing hukou is so sought after: not only are some of the highest-ranking institutions found in Beijing, both the university quota and admission mark help local students with Beijing registrations. Beijing’s students reap the benefits of being where educational resources are highly focused, and where they can score significantly lower to gain the same university place than students from other provinces.

With increasing numbers of university graduates each year, being one no longer holds the same prestige that it did, and so doesn’t hold the clear promise of a better life. Last year, the number of university graduates in China reached a record high of 7.49m, making job seeking ever more competitive, and even harder with the economic slow-down.

With family wealth and power becoming an ever more important determinant of the next generation’s success, graduates are also finding it hard to compete in the jobs market with those who have connections—or those who escaped the Gaokao altogether because they could afford it.  It is well known (and I personally know many people who have done this) that parents of children that fail in China’s rigid high school education system see going abroad as an attractive option. Irrespective of his or her grades in China, a haigui or “returnee from overseas” will most likely secure a better graduate job than someone who went to a middling university inside China.

But how to make the Gaokao fair? Not everyone wants to make it fair, for starters. Last month, when it was announced that 11 provinces including Shanghai would reallocate some places to more deprived provinces in west China, a sit-in protest ensued from local parents who saw it as a detrimental to their children’s future.

One reason why residents in Beijing continue to enjoy a rich educational resource is that the decision-makers who decide allocation among other factors are exactly those with Beijing hukou. Decisions that mean their children may lose a place at university to someone from Shandong goes a long way to explaining why real reforms are less forthcoming than they ought to be in many areas of policy. When the shadows of power and authority are shed, students from all over China will start enjoying a system—and the potential for advancement that it brings—that is much fairer.

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