Education reform should ease burden

Many education reform measures have emerged in The Decisions on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms. One of the measures is that the national college entrance exam will be based on the whole curriculum. This may increase the pressure on students, says an article on gmw.cn. Excerpts:

That the exam would be designed to cover all science and liberal arts courses would mean students have to learn every subject. And since during high school, all subjects, no matter whether maths, Chinese, physics or history are all important subjects that directly influence a student's quality, one cannot raise one above the other. So here is the problem: Every subject would be so crucial that students could not afford to neglect any of them, which would make their burdens even heavier.

The current employment situation is not good in China. Since the critical factors that directly determine whether a college graduate finds a job easily or has more opportunities than others are closely related to the ranking and reputation of the universities they study at, the pre-university competition to gain admittance to a prestigious university will not become less heated if the exam is no longer designed according to students' choice of science or liberal arts during high school.

To increase their competitive edge, many Chinese parents have turned to tutoring classes for help. Therefore, children would have a heavy study burden not only at school but also in extracurricular classes if the college entrance exam covers all subjects. Therefore, the negative effects and consequences are worth attention if the current college enrollment and employment mechanism remains unchanged.

Future reform of the education mechanism and design of the national college entrance exam should be more scientific, socially effective and conducive to talent development. How to avoid students from becoming too occupied with studying to participate in social activities is a problem the reform has to consider and solve. Besides, measures to reduce the study load on students should also be introduced at the same time to match the education policy of the new exam design.