There is ongoing debate about changes to the school curriculum in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to help students beat stress.

 

Parents and teachers have mixed feelings on the changes, which came into effect at the beginning of the school term on March 1.

 

Among the changes are caps on the amount of homework, exams and schooling hours, with the new regulation allowing students to get up half an hour later for school.

 

Middle and primary school students would not attend classes before 8:30 am and high school students not before 8:00 am. The time pupils, junior and senior high school students spend on study at school shall not exceed six, seven and eight hours a day respectively.

 

Furthermore, many kinds of exams were also pulled from the curriculum. Pupils only need take final exams for Chinese and math. Junior high school students will only take semi and final exams for Chinese, math and English. All the test scores would be kept confidential.

 

The regulation has also relieved students in Chongqing from a lot from heavy homework.

 

"I applaud the circular as it has taken into consideration of students' all-round, sound development. It is not uncommon to see pupils doing homework until 11 pm.

 

In many high schools, students are like 'exam-taking machines' who have to sit one test after another and worry if they are inferior to classmates, for teachers would announce their test scores in public and list their names in the order of test scores.

 

'All work, no play makes Jack a dull boy'. Heavy schoolwork has deprived students of their nature and innovation. Still worse, it may result in psychological problems with students. "

 

Shan Guangnai, researcher with the Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences.

 

"The concept of mitigating students' burden is very good. But students who have more time after school are sent to study in various training classes and with private teachers outside school to improve their performance in a wide range of subjects ranging from math to English, imposing another kind of pressure on their classmates.

 

Many parents worry if their children do not attend such training schools or hire private teachers, they would lag behind those who do.

 

They hope schools will be flexible in endorsing the circular and spend a bit more time teaching something useful to students after school so that they would not waste time. "

 

Wang Guofeng , an employee with the Nandong Mining Corporation and whose son is a junior high school student

 

"Many teachers and parents of students in our school have a mixed feeling of the circular. They both support and oppose it.

 

They support it because it cares for students' well-being and is conducive to students' sound physical and mental development. They oppose it because they consider the solution to mitigating students' burdens lies in reforming the senior high school entrance examination and national college entrance examination in which scores account.

 

Without reforming the examinations, parents with great expectations for their children would hope that schools would spend more time on them. To most of the parents, a better senior high school means a better university in the future and in turn more opportunities in the future job market."

 

Zhao Lindao, chief of the Teaching Affairs Section of Chongqing Conglin High School.

 

(China Daily March 23, 2007)