Gaokao reform needs cooperation

Some provinces failed to meet the central government’s deadline of the end of 2012 to come up with a plan that will allow migrant workers’ children to take the localgaokao, says an article in China Business News. Excerpts:

Chinese higher-education institutions have reformed their enrolling systems in recent years. But the admission quota system, which is based on hukou, or residence permits, for gaokao, the national college entrance examination, has not changed yet.

Some provinces failed to meet the central government’s deadline of the end of 2012 to come up with a plan that will allow migrant workers’ children to take the local gaokao.

In fact, this reform cannot be decided only by provincial-level authorities because the admission quota distribution is still determined by the central education authorities. If non-local students are allowed to take local gaokao and be considered as local students in the enrolling process, they will necessarily make local competition for the limited seats allocated to local students more fierce.

So the fundamental reform of gaokao rests with the reform of the admission quota system, which was designed according to the local population before. But the local population cannot be calculated according to the number of residents holding local hukou anymore as China now has a migrant population of more than 200 million.

Local governments should make specific rules according to local conditions so that all qualified migrant students can take local gaokao, while eliminating those who are “migrants” only for the sake of the gaokao. But the central authority should at least inform local decision-makers how it will reform current quota distribution system beforehand.

The key to the deadlock rests in the hands of the central authority. Governments of various levels must work with each other in the reform. Otherwise, even if local governments make their own reform plans for migrant students’ taking the local gaokao, those plans will be hard to implement and meet the students’ and parents’ expectations.