Top 10 high schools act to counter hype of exam performance

THE GAOKAO, national college entrance examination, results have been released, with 10 famous high schools jointly announcing they object to any attempts to hype up the high scores achieved by any of their students. China Youth Daily comments:

Every year, at the end of June, high schools always boast of their “achievements” in the gaokao. Some brag about high college entrance rates. Some show off they have quite a number of students enrolled by the top domestic universities. Some boast the average score of their students is high. Some boast they have more students enrolled by colleges than last year.

It seems that high schools can always find something to crow about. Yet the Ministry of Education together with other relevant departments have repeatedly banned such self-promotion by schools. In February, the ministry issued a new guiding document that forbids high schools from hyping up their gaokao achievements and bans local education bureaus from making rankings for schools based on their students’ results in the exams.

However, some commercial agencies still hype up the data online, one training agency for instance hyped up the “average gaokao scores of 10 famous high schools”. That’s what prompted the 10 schools to issue their joint announcement. There is still a long way to go before the hyping up of gaokao achievements is totally rooted out.

The key reason lies in the interest chain behind it. With more students being enrolled by colleges, high schools can easily take pride in that as their “achievements” to attract good students. The local education officials can also boast of their “progresses in education” and have a better possibility of promotion.

Thus the joint announcement of the 10 high schools is rather valuable. As famous high schools, they could have taken the opportunity to trumpet, but they refrained from that and forbid anyone from doing so in their names. It is to be hoped that more high schools follow their example.