10 million sit gaokao across country amid COVID-19
In a twist of fate, 10 million students in China mostly born in 2002, the year when the SARS outbreak emerged in the country and left many scars, are about to take the toughest examinations of their lives on Tuesday, with unforgettable and painful memories caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The year of 2020 is doomed to be special for them as it is the first time that the country had postponed the date of examination for a month due to the public health crisis since the country restored the college entrance examinations, or gaokao, in 1977; the first time that their classes were interrupted repeatedly, forcing them to spend most of the critical time for test preparation on online classes at home; and for the first time, they not only have to take the tests of Chinese, math, English, and either the sciences or liberal arts, but also the tests of body temperature, even nucleic acid.
One shot for life
Three weeks ago, Jiujiu’s high school life was hastily interrupted. Due to Beijing’s new wave of COVID-19 outbreak originating from the Xinfadi food market, the capital suspended all campus-based study after it raised its emergency response level to Level II on June 16.
Jiujiu, the 18-year-old senior high school graduate from Beijing’s Dongcheng district, said she had only been in the classroom for seven weeks and for the rest of the time she was
trapped at home as the whole nation implemented self-quarantine policies until late April, when Beijing’s high schools reopened for graduates.
Jiujiu felt studying at home more flexible, yet less efficient. Though she is not really nervous about the upcoming “lifechanging” examination, her classmates showed extreme anxiety in the prolonged month of study as they could not help speculating whether the delay will be good or bad for their scores.
The epidemic has not only impacted these students, but also their parents. Yang, Jiujiu’s mother, said the uncertainty regarding exam arrangements and college enrollment has been haunting her over the past six months.
A total of 10.71 million students will sit this year’s gaokao, an increase of 400,000 from last year.
Extra tests
On Monday, Jiujiu and her family went to check the exam site. “Staff were sterilizing the site,” Yang said. This year, each exam room has 20 candidates instead of 30 as usual, and Yang has been reporting Jiujiu’s health condition to the school’s WeChat group every day for two weeks as per the requirements of local education authorities.
Several teachers from high schools across the nation reached by the Global Times on Monday said temperature measurement offices have been set up at the campuses and spare classrooms have been prepared in case anyone exhibits symptoms of fever and cough during the exam. Disinfectant, hand sanitizer and special garbage bins have been placed in classrooms.
Apart from strict safety measures, psychological experts were also arranged to help relieve stress and anxiety for students before the tests.
Witnessing history
Dubbed as the “toughest” crop of graduating students, who also are experiencing incessant downpours that continue to wreak havoc across vast stretches of the country, many joked that they feel like their generation was chosen by God and are really witnessing history.
In Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province – the hardesthit area in China by the coronavirus outbreak, a taxi fleet was spotted on the streets. They were a group of medical volunteers who fought at the epidemic frontline five months ago. Now they are ready to sweat it out for the students.
Wuhan has 59,000 candidates for gaokao this year. The city has prepared 220,000 specially-made masks for gaokao candidates, local media reported. Once students enter their examination rooms, they will be required to change their masks to ones with “Wuhan Gaokao” printed on them.
Having stepped out of the darkest moments, many candidates in Hubei said they decided to apply for medicine as their major in college.
A student surnamed Chen in Huanggang, the secondmost populous city in Hubei which also suffered greatly from the epidemic, told the Global Times that he was planning to apply for universities in Beijing or Shanghai, but now, he decided to stay in Wuhan.
“The gaokao is just the beginning. I feel like I need to learn to live with the virus and I chose to stand with my hometown,” he said.
A variety of fraud cases have been testing the fairness and justice of the gaokao system for over a year. However, China has been implementing several policies to curb such problems, which has guaranteed fairness in the big picture.