Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

How does the Chinese education system differ to ours?

Scroll to see replies

As with what a lot of halready said, with such a high population competition for places at top schools/universities is intense. It's the norm for parents in the urban areas to pay for their kids to go to after-school tutorials, as well as saturday school. When i visited last year I met students who said that the teacher sometimes will also rank the class so everyone knows who is top/2nd/53rd...etc after a term.
Even so, competition for university if even more difficult. People apply to 15 institutions instead just the 5 here and it is morelikely for them to not get into their top 5 choices. University entry also has a point system. Kind of like UCAS but more focussed on exams as opposed to extra-curriculars. Unfortunately this system is unfair as universities change their point boundaries depening on where the applicant is applying from, making it even more difficult for students in the countryside to gain univeristy places as not only is the money paid by their parents for education dwarfed by city applicants, but universities also ask for a higher mark from such areas compared to places like Beijing. I found this out when i was there and a TV documentary depicted a genius who couldn't get into university because his UCAS-equivalent score was not high enough but it would have been had he lived in a city.

Basically, we're all very very lucky.

On a brighter note, I think the government are changing this system and are trying to make it more fair, albeit gradually.