The Ministry of Education yesterday nailed down a diversified senior high school enrollment system to replace the senior high school entrance examination this September.
After hearing suggestions from educators, teachers and students, the originally proposed six-channel senior high school admission scheme was simplified to three major channels: admission by application, school recommendation and allocations based on grades in the Basic Competency Tests (BCT).
Under the new initiative, school grades will not be referred to, but senior high schools are allowed to request interviews, oral tests and writing samples according to their individual needs.
"The new scheme is designed to make students happy, assuage parents' worries, and ease schools' anxiety,"
The six-channel admission draft plan was attacked because some parents, teachers and students felt that the scheme failed to alleviate the burden faced by students preparing for the senior high school examination.
Since Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng
The modifications were made based on four principals -- in spite of its flaws, the introduction of a multiple-channel plan is well-intentioned; the MOE only gives general guidance, which leaves senior high schools plenty of room to decide on their own requirements; both the rights of students' to receive education and the parents to select schools are respected; and all reforms should be carried out under the premise of taking care of the individual needs of each student, said Tzeng.
The old plan had six different methods for enrollment: the BCT, school recommendation, admission by application, admission based on school grades, a gifted student program and direct admission within the same school.
Following a trial period in a number of different schools, several reports in the Chinese media have said that the diversified admission plan actually increased pressure on students.
The growing anxiety reportedly stems from the fact that school grades were not previously taken into account, and because of this, students find themselves under pressure for the entire three years of junior high school. With the final entrance examination system they were only under pressure in their last year, before they took the test.
The principal distinction between the new three-channel scheme and the abolished six-channel one is that school grades will not be considered and that BCT grades will be the only criteria used to evaluate student's academic ability.
The BCT will be held twice a year and students are allowed to pick the better of the grades to use in applications to high schools. If students fail to be admitted to any school through the recommendation and application system, there is still a third chance -- to apply to be allocated using the BCT score.
The first BCT will be held over two days next year, on March 31 and April 1. The second one will be held on June 9 and 10.
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