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Print Edition> Nation
UPDATED: September 13, 2011 NO. 37 SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Rural Students Falling Behind
Access to leading universities more difficult than ever for students from rural areas
By YIN PUMIN
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POWER OF KNOWLEDGE: Xu Shengxue, the only teacher at Sanchakou Primary School in Pingshun County of north China's Shanxi Province, gives class to students on June 15 (YAN YAN)

Weak competitiveness

Despite criticism of its "scores-for-school" system, which leads to tough competition among students, the national college entrance examination is still considered the fairest way to determine a student's fate. Regardless of wealth and social status, every student must take the same examination, a fact that in the past led to a high percentage of rural students getting admitted to high-quality universities.

"However, recent reforms to the exam have altered the balance. Under new broader criteria, hard working rural students find themselves at a disadvantage," Xiong said.

Some policies aimed at broadening access to higher education have in fact made it more difficult for rural students to gain entry to leading universities. In 2003 reforms were introduced to allow students with more rounded profiles, not simply outstanding performers in exams, to enter universities. The Ministry of Education permitted 22 key universities to use their own criteria to independently select 5 percent of their students from high schools around the country.

The independent criteria focus more on students' creativity, imagination and learning skills. Students who are particularly talented in art, sport and literature can now enter these key universities despite their lower test scores. For example, Zhang Tianci, a talented violinist from Jinzhou, a city in northeast China's Liaoning Province, earned 60 privilege points to gain entry to Tsinghua University last year.

Many experts see this program as a way to break down the country's exam-oriented education system. They believe it to be conducive to better understanding where students' talents lie. There are now 80 universities involved in the program.

The shift away from a purely exam-based selection process, however, has placed rural students at a disadvantage. Admission based on talent in art, music or sports favors students who have the resources and time to cultivate extracurricular talents.

"When urban students compete for the Mathematical Olympiad or participate in English summer camps, it's obvious that rural students have fallen behind due to limited teaching resources," Xiong said. "Their isolated living conditions limit their knowledge of the outside world compared to urban students."

Likewise, students whose families are well-off can attend special classes or hire private tutors to improve their grades. Poor families cannot.

Some experts also claimed that examination questions and terms for admission to universities today favor urban students, further exaggerating the existing inequality. Oral English examinations are unfair to rural students who have less access to good English teachers.

"I had no idea what the oral English exam was before the last year of my senior high school," said Li Chen, a student at Peking University who comes from a small county in Gansu Province.

The national college entrance examination also tends to be more concerned with knowledge found outside textbooks, an advantage for teenagers who live in cities.

Chen Meishi, a sophomore at Tsinghua University, said her entrance exam required that she write about Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005), a renowned Chinese sociologist and anthropologist, attended.

"I didn't even know who Fei was, but urban students did," recalled Chen, who was born in a small village.

"The independent exam is partial to students from developed areas and rich families," said He Yunfeng, Director of the Research Institute of Knowledge and Value at Shanghai Normal University.

Super schools

Zhao at Tsinghua University considers himself lucky to have had the privilege of studying at a prestigious provincial-level high school, a springboard to a first-class university. "The door to Tsinghua University would have been shut before I even sat for the exam if I hadn't attended the high school I went to," he said.

The school Zhao attended is one of China's super middle schools. These schools, usually based in provincial capitals or developed cities, take up more of the country's already uneven educational resources. Their influence is such that they can recommend their outstanding students to top universities without taking the national college entrance examination.

While they are undoubtedly successful, these schools receive regular funding and other support from local governments and absorb the best teachers and students in a province, shortchanging other schools.

Zhao was born in a small mountainous village in Henan's Huixian County. Originally, he attended a local high school but after one year there, he found the school could not provide him with a sufficiently high quality of education. Heeding the suggestion of one of his relatives, he left the school and took an entrance exam to gain admission to the Xinxiang-based Affiliated Middle School of Henan Normal University. Having passed the exam he was accepted by the key high school which is known for placing large numbers of its students at top universities. This year alone, more than 360 students from the school gained admission to major universities.

"I'm glad to see four of my junior schoolmates coming to Tsinghua," Zhao said.

The super high school, Zhao said, was a completely different academic experience. "When I entered the classroom for the first time, I was astonished to see advanced teaching equipment, including projectors, video players and many computers. I had never seen these things at my previous schools," he said. "For the first time I learned what creative education and multimedia classes were."

"In my previous schools everything came from the textbook, but I discovered that there are many other ways to teach and learn," he said.

"More online materials were used for further study," Zhao said. "Urban students can take courses online and can download education materials easily, while students from the countryside have less access to the Internet and know little about the outside world."

Almost every province has one or two such super schools. In Henan, famous key schools include the Affiliated Middle School of Henan Normal University and the Zhengzhou-based Henan Experimental High School, Zhengzhou Foreign Language School and Zhengzhou No.1 High School.

This year the Zhengzhou Foreign Language School has 17 students entering Tsinghua University.

"Students like us have to be outstanding to gain admission to super schools and receive a higher standard of education," Zhao said. "If not, we have to stay at a county-level high school, which means little chance to enter top universities, no matter how hard we work."

His former classmates who studied at the high school in Huixian all ended up in local colleges or even abandoned their studies to work in local factories or migrate to the big cities.

A survey conducted by Jin, the Tsinghua lecturer, in northwest China's Shaanxi Province found that of the 2010 freshmen at Tsinghua University and Peking University who came from Shaanxi, more than 97 percent were graduates of five elite high schools in Xi'an, the province's capital.

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