An increasing number of Chinese parents are sending their children to alternative, private schools in order to avoid the high-stress environment of the state-run educational system.
The state-run high schools in China are solely focused on preparing students for the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, said Lijuan Shi, a curriculum and instruction program graduate student.
Shi said while colleges in the United States look at student’s SAT scores, community involvement and extra curricular activities, in China, what matters is a student’s score on the National Higher Education Entrance Examination — commonly referred to as gaokao.
The entrance exam is taken during a student’s third year of high school. Students in public schools prepare for the exam in a lecture-style class without collaborating with peers. Unlike the United States, there are not many activities for student engagement like group discussions or projects, Shi said.
Parents who plan to send their children abroad to a university are the ones who tend to seek out private schools rooted in alternative educational methods such as Montessori.
These parents want to familiarize their children with Western styles of learning before they start college, Shi said.
“There’s a need from rich people, smart parents who want to send their kids abroad,” she said. “There’s a need, so a market is established.”
During the 2012–2013 school year, 235,597 Chinese nationals studied in American colleges and universities, an increase of 21 percent from the previous year, according to the Institute of International Education.
Shi said most of the teachers at private schools in China have taught abroad or are foreigners themselves.
Sophomore economics major Ranzhu Zhao, a native of Changchun, a city in China’s Jilin province, decided to attend a university in the United States during her second year of high school.
“I talked to my parents and took one program offered [by] my school, an exchange in Boston for the fall of 2010,” she said.
Zhao decided she did not want to go through the stress of preparing to go to a university in China, and instead focused her last 18 months of high school preparing for the SAT and the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exams.
“Because the [gaokao] is really difficult a lot of my friends slept three hours a day,” in order to study, Zhao said.
Students are required to take gaokao exams in Chinese, English and math, although student choose to take additional exams in the sciences, social studies or the arts.
Public high school students in China typically arrive at school around 7:00 or 7:30 a.m and first review homework assignments from the night before.
Students then have four or five morning classes before breaking for about 90 minutes for lunch. After lunch, students attend three or four classes before a mandatory study hall session, in which teachers are required to stay in the classroom in case students have any questions, Shi said.
“If parents can afford it [they send their kids] to extra classes,” in the evenings or during holidays when school is not in session, she said.
With this additional instruction after the regular school day, it’s not unusual for a student to return home as late as 2 a.m.
Besides weekday instruction, schools operate on a half-day schedule on Saturdays, Shi said.
Even though the popularity of private schools offers students an alternative to the assessment-focused public schools, Shi said it’s unlikely public schools will change their curriculum.
“All teachers, all educators and all leaders…[their goal is for students to] pass the test,” she said.
