Dismal State of International Education in Hefei: Where is the Way?
Recently, a piece of breaking news hit my city Hefei: a student named Helen from Hefei No.1 High School was admitted to MIT, becoming the first student in Anhui province who ever got an offer from this Ivy League school. Besides her, the other seven Chinese students accepted to MIT all come from first-tier cities: Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. It seems not surprising that those students from big-city international schools can get the offer, but when it comes to the case in Hefei, a less well-known small city, it raises eyebrows. People ask: what is special about the international program in Hefei No.1 High School? How can it nurture such a successful student? Does international education in Hefei have a fast development speed and great competitive advantage? As a student coming from the international education program at the same high school as Helen, I have the say in this matter. Although some are optimistic about the prospect of Hefei’s international education, I believe that in fact, my city’s international education system still lags far behind that of many other cities, requiring reform and perfection.
Over the past few decades, to meet Chinese people’s growing demand to study abroad at overseas colleges, first-tier cities like Beijing or Shanghai have developed relatively mature international education systems with a variety of renowned international schools and overseas programs. But in small, less-developed cities like Hefei, the situation is much trickier. In the CGTN article called “The future of international education in China”, the author defines three types of international schools that are allowed by China’s Ministry of Education: schools for children of foreign workers (known as “ex-pat school”), Chinese-owned private international schools, and affiliated schools built by public schools. In Hefei, schools are featured by the last two types: private schools are in the minority while Sino-foreign cooperative public schools are in the majority. It is worth noting that compared with other developed cities, Hefei’s international education market started quite late: it was only around 2010 when several public schools set up international departments, and only in recent years have a few private schools emerged (Leo). As a result of this late start, those schools have not yet developed a comprehensive and balanced international curriculum. In other words, while they do apply western curricula and examinations like GCE Advanced Level (A-level), Advanced Placement (AP), and International Baccalaureate (IB), students need to take regular Chinese high school courses at the same time. Though some may claim that this can help Chinese students maintain their own cultural identity while accepting Western education, I argue that such an improper combination of courses prevents students from gaining authentic internationalized education. In this case, those programs become less international and more inclined to the traditional Chinese test-oriented education.
Worse, government censorship has played a key role in impeding the improvement of Hefei’s international education system. On Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer website like Quora, Leo, an international education expert from New-school Insight Media, criticizes the dismal current state of international education in Hefei and analyzes the reasons behind it. He points out that international departments in public schools have less development space due to the strict government censorship. For instance, on May 7, Hefei’s Education Bureau held a special conference on standardizing the international education system, announcing that international high schools’ admission brochures, textbooks, and curriculum contents shall all be reviewed by the approval authority (Leo). While I agree that this move is beneficial for the system’s normative development in the long run, I also have to admit that it poses great challenges to international schools’ course setting and recruitment at present. The CGTN article identifies this issue as well: at the end of 2019, China’s Ministry of Education published a regulation banning public schools in China from using textbooks of foreign countries to safeguard the nation’s educational sovereignty. This only made matters worse in the context of Hefei. I remember that our Human Geography and World History textbooks were banned for an entire semester under this censorship. That forced us to find other alternative learning resources to prepare for AP exams, which significantly influenced our learning efficiency. Not just public schools, private international schools are subject to government restrictions as well. An opinion piece by Viggo Stacey titled “Chinese Draft Amendment Threatens International Schools” discusses the regulations the Chinese government imposed particularly on the investment and operation of private international schools. He points out that “the government has repeatedly limited, censored, appointed the curriculum of those international schools with Chinese-passport students.” In Hefei, there are only four private international schools that provide K-9 education, and their propaganda and enrollment activities are all under Hefei Education Bureau’s strict check. I believe that facing this constraint, it is only natural that the international education system in Hefei hasn’t matured yet.
As one of the “victims” under this system, I am totally annoyed by its inadequacy and deeply feel the need for reform. Here, I’m not saying that the international schools in my city suck in a way that nobody can succeed. Helen is a good example of a beneficiary of the overseas program in my high school. The international department in my high school does provide a unique Western education experience for students and allows them to get offers from top universities in the US, UK, or other Western countries. However, according to my peers’ and my personal high-school learning experience, the flaws in the system cannot be ignored and would bring about negative effects. The school fails to provide resources and support for club development since the school authorities believe that studying is more important than engaging in extracurricular activities; hence, many club activities have been halted. What’s more, although our school has college counselors, I have realized that they are very inexperienced and often make dumb mistakes in my interactions with them. The underdevelopment in many aspects has constantly brought increasing pressure to students. Suffering from the lack of well-designed curriculum, diversified extracurricular activities, and professional college counseling, we have to prepare for standardized tests, activities, and application mostly by ourselves. Knowing that we have a less competitive edge on college admissions, we have to pay more effort to get higher test scores and more impressive resumes in order to apply for top overseas schools. So, how do students succeed within all those constraints of Hefei’s international education? In other words, since the international education system has been running for more than a decade without much change, does that mean there has been a way to fix the problem yet and keep the system stable?
I would argue that students’ success is due in large part to the extra time and efforts they pay outside of school, which seems to be an effective solution to the problem. Knowing that teachers cannot offer enough help in school, parents naturally send their children to cram schools like New Oriental Education & Technology Group, Lead-Learner, and Oriental Elite to prepare for all kinds of standardized tests. Besides, parents pay extra money to entrust their children to other college application consultancies in big cities. It seems that people have taken those unspoken problem-solving means for granted. However, while they can make up for the deficiency in Hefei’s international education system, I would say they also significantly increase monetary costs for parents and time costs for students. What is the point of international departments or schools if they cannot provide students with sufficient college preparation and high-quality education? Hence, the measures here are, and can only be, short-term solutions to the issue.
To solve this problem once and for all, we should count on the government to take effective actions to reform and improve the international education system in Hefei. I realize that China’s Ministry of Education (MoE) has published a new opinion piece on accelerating and expanding the opening-up of China’s education sector in June 2020. This “Opinions by eight government bodies including the Ministry of Education on accelerating and expanding the opening-up of education in the new era” suggest that China should eliminate barriers to enable reform in Chinese-foreign cooperation in running international schools, optimize the arrangement of work related to studying abroad, and establish an international curriculum system with Chinese characteristics for students (Cao). I totally agree with what MoE has announced regarding strengthening the internationalization of education. In this age of globalization, the modernization of Chinese education is inseparable from an international perspective. Such internationalization is beneficial because supporting Chinese students to gain experience and learn abundant knowledge from Western countries can in turn help China train more international talents to better serve the motherland. Therefore, I believe it is now urgent for Hefei’s local government to take measures to reform the international education system to fulfill this goal.
Hefei’s local government should make the further opening up of international education an important agenda under this national guidance. As I pointed out above, the most significant barrier to its development is government censorship. Hence, the local government should start by removing all current censorship and harsh regulations on both public and private international schools. Then, it should empower those schools to reinvent a more open and diverse international learning system on the institutional level. That is to say, international schools must change their current curriculum that mainly centers on learning, which still retains the characteristics of Chinese traditional exam-oriented education to a large extent. In this regard, they can definitely learn from the successful examples of international schools and overseas programs in first-tier cities. For instance, Li Pu argues in his article “The golden age of China’s education has come!” that what makes the elite international education in those cities particularly successful is their focus on faculty quality and platform resources. A cooperative teaching team that is composed of both foreign and Chinese teachers with excellent language skills and cross-cultural understanding as well as abundant networking resources that support students’ participation in diversified extracurricular activities allow them to offer a marvelous learning platform (Li). In theory, applying their advanced educational model may help Hefei’s international education to grow. However, practically speaking, I think it can be difficult for Hefei’s international schools to attract experienced teachers and increase educational resources in a short time due to the relatively slow overall city growth compared to developed first-tier cities. Thus, I believe Hefei also needs to continue to accelerate economic, technological, and urban development to back up its development of international education.
To sum up, while many first-tier cities in China have developed a mature elite international education system to meet the increasing need of Chinese to study abroad, in small cities like Hefei, the education quality is obviously not comparable. Such a distinction in international education can push us to think of the bigger issue of education inequality in China. There has always been an imbalance in educational resources and opportunities between big cities and small cities, and between urban areas and rural areas. Addressing the issue regarding international education is part of alleviating this imbalance. Therefore, both the central and local governments should give more attention and help to reform the international education system in Hefei. If all those effective measures as I suggested above are taken, I believe that the international education in Hefei can soon catch up and gain a better reputation and stronger competitive edge.
Works Cited:
Cao, Jian. “教育部等八部门全面部署加快和扩大新时代教育对外开放.” 中华人民共和国教育部, 18 June 2020, www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/202006/t20200617_466544.html.
Leo. “合肥国际教育现状：遭遇政策‘寒流’，民办校路在何方？.” 知乎专栏, 11 June 2019, zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/68652050.
Li, Pu. “中国国际化教育的黄金时代已经到来！.” 知乎专栏, 7 Aug. 2020, zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/172441795.
Stacey, Viggo. “Chinese Draft Amendment Threatens International Schools.” The PIE News, 23 Aug. 2018, thepienews.com/news/chinese-draft-amendment-threatens-international-schools/.
“The Future of International Education in China.” CGTN, 17 Nov. 2020, news.cgtn.com/news/2020–11–17/The-future-of-international-education-in-China-VutSbCWfLO/index.html.
