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Turmoil over elimination of extra test points
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CHEN Lin, a young violin player, has packed away all her competition trophies, symbolizing a farewell to the 10-year toil her parents believed would secure her a spot in a top university.
With big changes afoot for the country’s all-important national college entrance exam, known as gaokao, students will no longer be rewarded “extra points” for sports or artistic pursuits beginning in 2015.
It’s a change eagerly embraced by the young violinist, who’s entering her first year of high school.
“I’ll continue with the violin, but not for the gaokao. Now I have time to read a book, see a movie and hang out with friends,” she says.
Chen, a pseudonym given at her request, has played violin since kindergarten. She says most of her spare time during childhood was spent practicing the violin under intense pressure from her parents and teachers, killing her interest in the instrument. “Actually, I hated it sometimes,” she says.
While Chen embraces the change, her parents are left feeling dispirited. They had high hopes the awards their daughter won would secure her bonus points for the gaokao and a better chance at entering one of the country’s top universities, such as Peking or Tsinghua, her father says.
The couple have forked out more than 800,000 yuan (US$130,000) on her violin lessons. “Her violin alone cost 30,000 yuan,” he says.
Thousands of families in Beijing were caught unprepared by the policy change, since annually over 3,000 gaokao participants in the capital city enjoyed bonus points for sporting or musical achievements, according to a report by the Beijing Evening News.
The parents’ anxiety was shared by Cheng Shu, who has pushed her daughter, the same age as Chen, to practice cello for four years. The Shanghai mother admits that discarding the “extra points” system would make the gaokao more fair, but says “it’s a crying shame my daughter’s efforts have been in vain.”
The “extra points policy was designed to make up for the weakness of the traditional gaokao, which focused solely on students’ academic performance while ignoring non-academic skills. It was designed to encourage rounded development of students.
However, it has spawned an underground business, says Wu Zunmin, professor with the China Institute of Education Policy. “Some students, parents, schools and local education authorities have worked together to take advantage of the policy.”
He believes terminating the policy will clean up admission procedures that are sometimes corrupt.
A student recruitment official with Shanghai’s prestigious Tongji University, who declined to be named, says some local authorities have influenced who qualified for the points.
“Under the ‘extra points’ policy, it’s not uncommon to find a student with ‘musical talent’ doesn’t understand the musical staff or another with the ‘painting gift’ can’t do a simple sketch,” said a sociologist in Shanghai who gave only his surname as Zhu.
In a high-profile college admission scandal this summer, 87 out of about 1,000 gaokao participants of a high school in Benxi in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province were initially awarded extra points since they possessed athlete certificates.
The figure of 87, only two less than the combined number with extra points for sports talent in five other cities in Liaoning, drew widespread doubts.
Later the provincial education authorities ordered re-examinations, and 66 of the school’s 87 students voluntarily gave up the test and their privileges were canceled.
Concerns have emerged that students and parents may lose passion for developing non-academic skills due to the policy change. But Ye Zhiming, vice president of Shanghai University, believes one of the new measures has pointed to a solution.
The measure says schools should build profiles for students, which include not only their academic scores, but also evaluation of their special talents, moral condition as well as physical and mental health.
“Hopefully, the profiles recording students’ overall quality can replace the ‘extra points’ system,” Ye says.
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