The Gaokao Examination Affect

Name Professor Subject Date The Gaokao Examination Affect Introduction In all societies around the world, education is a key component that enhances social and economic development as well as ensures stability and equality. Governments spend huge resources to facilitate access to affordable education opportunities for their populations despite many difficulties and diverse demands from those individuals seeking education. Public education systems face major financial challenges in maintenance and expansion of education reforms in spite of education being an individual investment. Students seeking high quality education habitually do not have a high regard for the public education system and consequently search for alternative education resources and schools that are private in nature. Private education aims to bridge a gap created by the incapacity of public education systems to offer quality education. Besides guaranteeing students better performance and improved outcomes, it also provide supplementary tutoring privately. Students in China can access private tutoring right from elementary level to higher levels of education and with progressively competitive education systems, private tutoring is a popular option for many students and their families for a number of reasons including the one child policy which eliminates the gender difference in education requirements, increased disposable income which enables families to invest on their children, the desire to get high scores on National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) which is commonly known as Gaokao. Colleges and universities in China admit students based on Gaokao performance and it’s the single most important examination that determines a student’s career path which will inform their social mobility for the rest of their lives. In China the Gaokao is a determinant for students wishing to get post secondary education opportunities and enables social mobility in China. This paper studies the significance of entrance examinations and private tutoring in China and their impact on student perceptions about learning and life and also seeks to understand the effects of the social inequalities and their impact on students’ Gaokao performance. Education in China The Chinese people understood the value of education from ancient times and presently it is highly regarded both at the family level and within the society at large a fact that determines how an individual is considered in the social strata. The education system consists of five levels composed of preschool, elementary school, lower secondary upper secondary and higher education (Li 3). At the higher education level, there are different institutions that one can join to pursue their preferred majors because there are of two clusters offering a two to three year undergraduate diplomas cluster and a four to five year bachelor’s degrees cluster. Both the elementary and lower secondary education are mandatory through a legal provision but the enrolment levels are always low. Upper secondary education is not compulsory. High school entrance examination is administered through the provincial administration after the completion of the 9th grade and it is called the Zhongkao. As a policy of the government of China, regional administrative units are not allowed to construct and operate privileged schools at both elementary and lower secondary level. Additionally, learning institutions are not permitted to establish honor classes and regular ones although the government provides specific schools for those students who are academically bright as a way of setting standards and as an example to other schools aimed at improving the quality of education (Bai et al., 17). The privileged or key schools have precedence in choosing those students, who are high performers, hire the best teachers for them and get enough resources from the government. Students who attend privileged lower school have higher chances of getting an admission into a privileged upper secondary school which leads to entry into a good university hence a good life in future. Gaokao is a matriculation examination that is administered by the ministry of education and is given to all those students wishing to join a post secondary learning institution. The ministry is responsible for the development of the examination questions while the local authorities organize for logistical issues such as preparation of exam papers, exam sites, grading as well as scoring because the majority of higher learning institutions are government sponsored and funded through...