Foiled gaokao switch by son of star school's principal creates stir

The son of the principal of a well-known high school in North China's Hebei province tried to take the critical national college entrance exam this summer 3,000 kilometers away in the Tibet autonomous region－where he would face less fierce competition due to preferential policies.

Though he failed to take the exam there, the incident has become a sensation online in recent days.

Hebei Hengshui High School, in Hengshui, Hebei, is renowned nationwide for its ability to nurture excellent students, especially in terms of getting high scores in the annual college entrance examination, known as the gaokao.

Since 2005, a total of 675 graduates from the school have been enrolled by China's two top universities－Peking University and Tsinghua University－its website showed.

The son of school principal Xi Huisuo signed up to take the gaokao in Tibet in June this year though he had studied at Hengshui High School for his three high school years, according to a report by ThePaper.cn.

The article said the conduct broke gaokao policies.

Xi was deputy head of the education bureau of Ngari prefecture in Tibet from July 2016 to April 2018, media reports said. His son changed his household registration to the prefecture in March 2018, ThePaper.cn reported.

According to Tibet's gaokao policy, children of officials who assist in the region for a certain period of time can take the gaokao there if they also have their household registrations in Tibet, regardless of whether they actually went to high schools there, the Tibet Autonomous Region Education Examination Institute said.

The policy is designed to encourage officials to transfer to the region and support its development.

However, if Xi were not an official assisting Tibet, his son would have had to study in the region for at least one year before getting permission to take the gaokao in Tibet, according to the policy.

But the son's qualification to take the gaokao in Tibet was canceled because his father's position lasted for less than the required three years, an anonymous employee at the institute told ThePaper.cn.

It is unknown where, or whether, the boy finally took the exam.

Due to reasons such as its small population, the minimum passing mark in Tibet for admission into colleges is relatively lower than in larger provincial-level regions.

In Tibet this year, the cutoff mark for students from the Han ethnic group seeking to enroll in liberal arts courses at ordinary colleges and universities was 325 points out of a possible 750. For all students in Hebei it was 454 points.

In recent years, national policies concerning students relocating to take the gaokao have become stricter to ensure the fairness of the exam.

On the Sina Weibo micro-blogging platform, postings on the topic have been read by about 130 million users and commented on about 13,000 times.

"The conduct sounds so ironic that such a 'great' school's principal should make his son escape from the competition in his own province via underhand methods," a top comment under a post by ThePaper.cn said.

Another user said it only proved that the principal didn't believe in his own school.