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Beijing on Monday banned written exams for six- and seven-year-olds, as a part of sweeping schooling reforms aimed toward relieving strain on pupils and oldsters in China’s hyper-competitive college system.
China’s exam-oriented system beforehand required college students to take exams from first grade onwards, culminating within the feared college entrance examination at age 18 referred to as the gaokao, the place a single rating can decide a toddler’s life trajectory.
“Too frequent exams … which trigger college students to be overburdened and beneath big examination strain,” have been axed by the Ministry of Schooling, in response to new pointers launched Monday.
The ministry mentioned the strain on pupils from a younger age “harms their psychological and bodily well being.”
The rules additionally restrict exams in different years of obligatory schooling to as soon as a time period, with mid-term and mock examinations allowed in junior highschool.
The measures are a part of wider authorities reforms of China’s schooling sector, which embody a crackdown on cram colleges — seen by mother and father as a option to inflate their youngsters’s academic fortunes.
In late July, China ordered all personal tutoring companies to show non-profit and barred tutoring businesses from giving classes in core topics at weekends and holidays, successfully crippling a $100 billion sector.
The purpose is to scale back China’s schooling inequality, the place some middle-class mother and father willingly fork out 100,000 yuan ($15,400) or extra per 12 months on personal tutoring to get their youngsters into prime colleges.
Many additionally snag property in colleges’ catchment areas, driving up home costs.
“There isn’t any different nation that has such a robust tutoring tradition (as China),” mentioned Claudia Wang, accomplice and Asia schooling lead at Shanghai-based consulting agency Oliver Wyman.
With inhabitants development at its slowest in a long time, Chinese language authorities lifted a two-child beginning restrict earlier this 12 months and want to enhance incentives for folks to have extra youngsters.
Beijing metropolis authorities final week introduced that lecturers should rotate colleges each six years, to forestall a focus of prime expertise at some colleges. Schooling officers on Monday reiterated a ban on colleges organising “precedence” courses for presented college students.
The Ministry of Schooling additionally banned written homework for first- and second-graders earlier this 12 months, and restricted homework for junior excessive college students to not more than 1.5 hours per evening.
Nonetheless, many Chinese language mother and father nonetheless regard schooling as a path to social mobility.
The gaokao is without doubt one of the few ways in which poor, rural college students can entry higher academic alternatives and job prospects at prime universities.
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