How The Chinese Education System Works
If You Move to China, Keep your Children in International Schools — or Maybe Don’t. Here’s Why.
During summer vacation, I would visit many cities in China when I was smaller. You might expect me to visit relatives and cousins who are as old as I am, but usually, I stayed with my grandparents.
Whenever I visited children who were of my age, they had homework to do.
It was only after I moved to Shanghai as a local student that I learned what school means in China. (I was already fluent when I moved there, so I stayed at a local school.)
#1 Rankings
Millions of students aspire to go to university in China. Germany only has a handful of youngsters who are battling for uni-places, partly because other opportunities are becoming more attractive, but mostly, because Germany only has a few students to distribute. There are simply too many people living in China, which makes a fair distribution or a CV with a hundred extracurriculars impossible to be considered for decision-making bodies.
What results from the high population is a thought-through system of school-rankings and much more.
You are familiar with university rankings. Worldwide, Oxford, MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, Harvard, are the most prestigious unis to go to. In China, the rankings are already happening in high schools. There are private and public schools of course, and expensive or cheap schools, but rankings of High Schools include all public and private ones.
For universities to find the best students for their degree, they prefer students from high schools that are ranked very high. It leads to a few high schools being well-known in the country because there is a high percentage of students who first went to that high school and succeeded in the application process to the best universities. Often, your high school already makes up 50% of your university choice, simply because of such percentages.
Most of those great high schools are very expensive. Most of the students who go there live in the most upper class of society. Thereby, the universities and high schools make sure that their students have big goals to achieve and a strong support system from their families.
Unlike Germany, high school and middle school are separated in China.
Greatest high schools have to choose their students wisely, too. What could be more helpful than a ranking system for middle schools, then? They are ranked, too. And they have, after high school, the hardest exams I can imagine.
But I tell the Chinese audience nothing new when I say that rankings start in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten.
Get your child into a good kindergarten, and it will be accepted into a good elementary school, which will get it to the best middle school, which brings you to a great high school, which is your pathway to the top universities.
In a nutshell, schools of all kinds are being ranked and your education is important, whatever age you are and whatever school you go to.
#2 Learning is Intentionally Hard
The school system, however, doesn’t care about which school you go to to make school life hard for you. The best schools are usually also the hardest because teachers give you loads of homework to do. If you attend a great high school, but don’t put in the extra hours expected, you are on death row. No money can buy you the good marks for university entry. Students of supportive and rich families are sometimes forced to be overachievers.
To have good marks, being in class and doing your homework is not enough. Exams in China are not made by the teachers but by higher instances that give every student the same exam to take. So all Students of Shanghai, for example, attend the same exam, although they go to different high schools and have different teachers. Those exams are hard to master if you have a bad teacher. This is why great schools have a percentage of PhDs, top university absolvents, etc.
Teachers can’t teach their students everything they need to know for their exams. It is simply too much. High schools dedicated to sports or arts, for example, might have math teachers that don’t take things too seriously. They will prepare the class to pass the exam, for example, with 70%, and only teach them enough so that they can pass. Anyone who wants to have higher grades will be required to learn outside of school to go to extra classes. They are extremely expensive, but often, they are worth it.
Even in the greatest schools, most of the students I know take some extra classes even after a 10 hour school day with 4 hours of homework afterwards.
A friend of mine, 6 years old, was crying to her mother, begging her for a 10 minutes rest before continuing her workday. Every minute of that girl is scheduled, and it will only get worse for her once she goes to middle school.
#3 Extracurricular Activities
It may seem like there is no time for extracurriculars, but parents will always make the time for their children to learn the piano if they can afford it. The reason is simple. There are too many students getting the best marks. Just being the best in school will never be enough for you to stand out in China. Therefore, there are rankings and tests in every extracurricular activity.
Language sufficiency can be tested and proven from A1(beginner) to C2(native speaker). The same goes for all activities outside the language realm.
I learned to play the piano in Germany, and although there are levels/tests to take, I have never been introduced to them nor considered taking them, because nobody cares. Since I play classical piano, I am already at a high level. In China, you can be ranked from level 1 to 10, followed by “performer” levels, which is where I would position myself now, after 12 years of playing.
For Chinese students, taking those piano exams like language sufficiency tests is their no. 1 priority. This is why they have the greatest techniques and seem to make everything better than westerners — they know where they are going and they do everything to achieve that.
#4 Equality and Inequality
All students living in one area take the same A-Levels exams. They differ per state because states have individual requirements for their students. In Shanghai, for example, language — especially English language acquisition — and maths skills are important for A-Level, so they might count more into your mark. Students living in the countryside will have easier English language exams because they are not expected to speak English or meet foreigners in their region.
Depending on where you live according to your passport, you have to take the exams from the region that you come from. Often, exams from the countryside or middle parts of the country, are much much harder, because there are more students. — Remember — many university places are already reserved for the best high schools. So countryside high schools might only get the best student in their year (with 1000 students) into a top university. People living in the countryside have to work 10 times, maybe 100 times harder to get into good universities.
Ultimately, your kindergarten decides your university and that determines where you will go in the future.
A low university usually gives you fewer career opportunities and respect.
Unlike America, being a university dropout is not cool. Once you enter uni, real-life and parties start, and learning will become much easier.
I had the privilege of going to a great local high school. In my dorm in the city center of Shanghai, I cried to my mother in a video call, thanking her for saving me from the Chinese education system. I knew the German middle schools, so when I went to a Chinese high school, I had gratitude for the easy years I got to spend in Germany.
Thank you for bringing me to school in Germany. Thank you for sparing me the hard years studying. Thank you for caring for me. Thank you.
Students in the west have no idea what education in China looks like. Similar systems can be found in Japan and in Korea, where it might be even worse than in China. However, I learned a lot in China and don’t generally oppose the system. I feel sorry for the students and I have high respect for anyone who comes out of it “alive” without depression. Chinese people are learning-machines and I am grateful for being a part of two different education systems.
#5 International Schools
If you move to China, you will make your children more Chinese when you enroll them in the system. If you put them into international schools designed for foreigners, those schools usually are great, but they separate you from the “real life” in China. Your children won’t become locals if they never went to a real local high or middle school.
Enroll them in local schools and switch to international schools, which are by far easier and more like American or European school, when their marks count for A-Levels. It is only then that you will have a child who knows local Chinese students and who can identify with the “real” Chinese person as being a part of the system. International schools will separate students from the system, making you a part of the elite which has no connection to Chinese locals.
