Given the seriousness of the exam, some writers have described the color of July, the examination month, as black—the color of war.

If the college entrance examination is a war, the preparation for the war starts at the beginning of high school or even earlier. Each year, nearly 10 million high school graduates and their parents charge into this battlefield full of the smell of gunpowder. Many other students and their parents are warming up even though their examinations are years away.

One high school student described his daily routine over the past year: Get up at 5:30 a.m. to memorize English words; reach school at 7:30 a.m. for classes in which teachers analyze the exam papers from previous years, explain the difficult examination questions and give tips on how to take the exam; after four classes it’s lunchtime, which is followed by self-study and doing assignments, leaving no time for a nap or chat; another four classes run from 1:15 p.m. to 5 p.m. for more analysis of examination questions and more tips; finally back at home, there’s two to three hours of homework before reviewing lessons, reading books and doing extra exercises until 11 p.m.

This is the life of the majority of high school students in China.

Since China reinstated the college entrance examination in 1977, a great number of talented students have been selected to enter institutions of higher education, which has promoted social development and progress. However, the national college entrance examination is also a double-edged sword. A series of educational and social problems have cropped up due to various flaws in the examination system. Regarded as a deciding factor for a student’s fate, the exam has placed huge pressures on students, parents, teachers and schools. In addition, the examination papers, which pay more attention to knowledge accumulation than to building students’ practical skills, have forced primary and middle school education onto an exam-oriented track of development. As a result, many Chinese students are regarded as "having high scores but poor coping skills."

Given these problems, China has no choice but to reform the college entrance examination system. Although it will be very hard to move on this wheel, which is restrained by many factors, people are confident that it can be moved if they try hard enough.

Failed Exams

Wang Meng, a famous Chinese writer and former minister of culture, has had his articles included many times in middle school Chinese language textbooks. To test his own language proficiency, he has written a few college entrance examination papers on the Chinese language. In the end, he managed to pass just one and failed the rest.

This has made many people ask: Does this show the writer is unqualified or are there some problems with the examination papers? One education expert said bluntly that the college entrance examination papers, particularly the written composition, over the past two decades should all be rated under the level of pass. One middle school headmaster, also quite critical of the examination papers, said they should have done better in encouraging students’ creative thinking.

He Jianming, a Chinese writer who has been following and researching Chinese education for years, pointed out that the current college entrance examination system needs to be reformed. The biggest problem with the examination over the past 20 years, he said, is that it merely focuses on "lifeless knowledge." Such an examination model, he noted, will stifle the Chinese people's inborn wit and wisdom, and as a result "these heads, except for being able to contain more knowledge than others, lack creativity and vitality."

In 1999, China started to introduce a massive reform to the college entrance examination system. China had already conducted three major reforms to the examination system in 1983, 1987 and 1998. In 1999, the Central Government issued the Decision on Deepening Educational Reform and Comprehensively Promoting Education for All-Round Development, in which it required an accelerated reform of the examination and evaluation system in order to change the situation that "one exam determines one’s future." Ministry of Education officials also pledged that they would reform the college entrance examination system in accordance with the principle of helping to recruit talented students for institutions of higher education, boosting education for all-round development in primary and middle schools and expanding the autonomy of institutions of higher education. Through this reform, the officials hope to put in place a college enrollment system that is more objective and fair in addition to being able to provide more alternatives.

Reform of the college entrance examination mainly involves the subject makeup and contents of the exam. In addition, education authorities are exploring the possibility of holding two college entrance examinations a year, one in the spring and the other in the summer, in order to enlarge enrollment.

Traditionally, the compulsory test subjects for liberal arts students included political science, the Chinese language, mathematics, history, geography and English. For science students, subjects included political science, the Chinese language, mathematics, physics, chemistry and English. Such a subject choice has been considered by an increasing number of people as negative for the comprehensive development of students.

After many experiments, education authorities have come out with the "3+X" scheme, an improved test model to be popularized nationwide in three years. The "3" refers to the Chinese language, mathematics and English, the three subjects on which every student must be tested. In the English examination, a test for listening comprehension will be gradually added. In addition, a unified mathematics examination will be applied to both liberal arts and science students, who used to be given different types of test papers for mathematics. The "X" signifies a single choice or multiple choices from such subjects as physics, chemistry, biology, political science, history, geography and a comprehensive subject. Besides, students should also participate in the tests on one or more than one subject required by the schools they are applying for.

The comprehensive subject is a newly added test subject, which can be a comprehensive liberal arts test, a comprehensive science test, or a combination of the two. Instead of being "assorted dishes" made up of certain proportions of physics, chemistry, political science, history and other subjects, the comprehensive subject is meant to test the students’ ability in comprehending, remembering and using what they have learned at school.

The "3+X" model, which has been introduced in 18 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, will be applied nationwide next year. Although some experts have raised questions about the "3+X" model, many still believe it shows significant improvement compared with the old one.

Reform of examination content also centers on checking students’ ability and level of quality. Qu Zhenyuan, director of the Department of Institutions of Higher Education under the Ministry of Education, heads the working team that leads the college entrance examination reform. He pointed out that the reform of the content is actually about changing the old ways in designing test questions. More attention should be given to practical application, instead of knowledge, in designing test questions, he said. In addition to testing students’ abilities related to individual subjects, the examination should also try to evaluate their comprehensive abilities across different subjects.

However, some experts say that because of age and knowledge restraints high school students have limited ability to analyze interrelated complex matters. Given this, they propose that the comprehensive subject test should focus more on a student’s ability to comprehend all areas of an individual subject than on dealing with problems incorporating the knowledge of different subjects.

Many changes are already happening with examination content. For instance, the test paper has been shortened to leave students more time for thinking. The proportion of test questions related to real world situations has increased to give more space for students’ creativity.

Middle schools have reacted positively to the reform. Many have started reforming their teaching content and means to foster students’ ability and level of quality, especially the ability to analyze and solve problems, as well as creativity and practical abilities.

Education for All

In this latest college entrance examination, a 72-year-old man named Wang Xia in Nanjing was seen writing the examination paper together with other students of his grandchildren’s age. This extraordinary event has been a result of the recent lifting of age restrictions for college applicants.

In China, being under 25 and unmarried have been necessary conditions for college applicants. But starting this year there won’t be such rules any more. According to a new rule: Anyone, married or unmarried, may apply to take the college entrance examination as long as he or she has a high school graduation certificate or other certificates at an equivalent level.

The age restriction was caused by inadequate development of China’s higher education, which greatly limited colleges’ capacity to absorb students. After contracting out to private organizations the colleges’ non-core section, such as the management of dormitories and cafeterias, among other things, and introducing higher tuition fees, it has now become possible for colleges to loosen their restrictions and let in more students.

Many experts have welcomed the lifting of the age restriction. They believe that lifting the age restriction will enable more people to receive a formal higher education in China, where the overall quality of its human resources is quite low.

The experts also believe that the knowledge economy is erasing the traditional line that sets apart the period of receiving education and the period of working. In the past, people tended to regard study as exclusive to young people and thought working people should do nothing else but work. This has resulted in a lack of continuity in the chain of knowledge. In the future, people of all ages will be able to resume their education any time they want. As well, employers will also prefer the so-called "composite talents" who have both good experience and a great educational background. In many households, the atmosphere for studying may also become stronger.

Regarding the problems that will come along with the lifting of age restrictions, such as the management of school records, Qu said that the Ministry of Education will soon unveil policies concerning the credit system, flexible length of schooling and other related issues.

Society also reacted strongly to the lifting of restrictions for college applicants. Some parents worry that adults’ participation in the college entrance examination might reduce their children’s chances of getting into college. Some are also worried that adult students might bring some negative influences onto the campuses.

In view of this, Prof. Gong Fang from the Higher Education Institute of Nanjing University pointed out that lifting the restrictions on age and marital status is a path that must be taken in developing higher education and building a system for lifelong education. He said that the United States and other Western countries started doing this in the 1980s and one-third of college students in the United States are above 25 years of age. Such a practice has some advantages: First, it breaks the limit of time and space to merge higher education with the system of lifelong education; second, young students will benefit from studying with adult students.

However, some experts also admit that the adults’ participation in the college entrance examination will give rise to problems related to the criteria for enrollment. For instance, if an adult applicant’s score is the same as a high school graduate, the college will probably choose the adult over the teenager because the adult has more social experience and stronger abilities.

Unbearable Pressure

For various reasons, higher education is still available to only a minority of people in China. Although the education administration pledged last year to raise the college enrollment ratio to 15 percent from the current 9 percent in 10 years, there will still be 85 percent of 150 million young students unable to enter college by then.

The heavy pressure of competition has proved unbearable for many teenagers. Prof. Wang Jisheng, director of the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has studied more than 20,000 students in 500-odd classes from 30 middle schools in Beijing. The results show that 32 percent of the students have psychological problems of varying degrees, of whom 28 percent have slight symptoms, 3.9 percent have medium-level symptoms and 0.1 percent have serious problems.

A survey conducted in Hangzhou City of Zhejiang Province also revealed that 16.8 percent of students who took the college entrance examination last year complained of dizziness during the exam, and another 25.38 percent developed serious psychological disorders when preparing for the examination. According to some other reports, 38 percent of the students in Shanghai and 27 percent of the students in Chengdu developed "examination anxiety" symptoms.

Experts believe that the students’ anxiety over writing the exam is a result of huge pressures from society, parents, schools and themselves.

"The pressure needs to be shared by all parties concerned as early as possible,"some experts said.

Tang Denghua, a psychiatrist at No.6 Hospital affiliated to Peking University, pointed out that the deciding factor for successful psychiatric treatment is not up to the psychiatrist. He especially warned people not to view psychological problems as something horrible. He said that most of the anxiety related to the exam will disappear on its own.

Some experts view the issue from another angle and point out that experiencing the pressure of writing the college entrance examination is actually another type of test of an individual’ abilities. Although there is something irrational about such pressure, people still have to endure it because that’ the reality. Those who are psychologically weak, they noted, won’ be able to achieve anything in the future.

Seizing the Brightest

Compared with students and their parents, schools face even bigger pressures, for their prestige depends on their graduates’ overall performance at the college entrance examination. Although many teachers and parents disagree with the practice of evaluating the quality of a school based on its performance at the examination, almost all the prestigious middle schools have built their names on high college enrollment ratios.

The Chinese writer, He Jianming, said he remembers some middle school headmasters telling him in private: "If we only get slow students in our schools, we cannot have a high college enrollment ratio no matter how famous our schools are or how competent our teachers are. The smart people just do ‘smart things’ or take shortcuts that save both energy and trouble."

He later learned that the so-called ‘smart things’ are middle schools trying everything they can to enroll the brightest students in their schools. In Beijing, the No.4 Middle School is recognized by all as a prestigious school, with many of its students entering Peking University, Tsinghua University or other top universities after graduation. He attributed this to the fact that the school can enroll the smartest students in the city every year. Compared with other ordinary middle schools, the lowest score required for entering the No.4 Middle School is quite high.

The competition for top students occurs not only in middle schools, but also in colleges, where the quality of freshmen students is also regarded as crucial for the overall quality of education. To draw the most talented students, many colleges compete to raise the amount of scholarships for new students or pledge other preferential treatment.

Recently, such practices have been challenged by a few prestigious statistical experts including Miao Boqi and Fang Zhaoben, tutor of the doctoral program at the University of Science and Technology of China. After researching the evaluation system for the quality of college education with the help of the latest statistical methods and on the basis of rich data and facts, they have proven that it is wrong to think that those with a high score in the college entrance examination will also perform well after entering college. These experts believe that the score for the college entrance examination, when surpassing a certain level, will not be the major factor deciding a student’s academic performance any more. Instead, a student’s level of diligence and his or her attitude toward studying will become a deciding factor. Given this, these experts suggest that colleges stop focusing on enrolling the top students and pay more attention to their own special requirements.

Many education experts believe that the promotion of this theory will help prevent showering too much attention on students who get high scores in the college entrance examination.

(Beijing Review 07/24/2001)