CRI听力:Unsuccessful Policy Adding Burden for Students

The draft guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education aim to lessen the heavy workload on students suggests that primary school pupils should not have any form of written homework.

Instead, schools should cooperate with parents to organize more extracurricular activities, including museum tours and library study sessions.

However, no parent wants their child to lag behind; many parents are actually sacrificing more of their children's spare time to reinforce their learning. One mom says:

"The homework teachers give in the class is much less than in the past; on the other hand, parents are currently facing great pressure. What taught in school are not enough for students. Parents have to make it up in spare time."

Zhang Ruiyue is a primary school pupil in the fifth grade. She says that many of her classmates are enrolled in several after-school courses in preparation for the fiercely competitive selection exams in the transition from primary to middle school.

"Every one of my classmates is enrolled in several training classes, and they attend at least one class a day, adding up to 10 such classes a week. The most popular one is Olympic mathematics, which gives us the ability to solve maths problems designed for much older age groups. Parents say the primary to middle school selection exam may use questions from Olympic mathematics courses."

Scores and exams are still the key indicators of a students' school performance, as opposed to the unquantifiable benefits derived from museum tours and other extracurricular activities.

Kang Jian, professor at the Institute of Education at Peking University points out that the draft guidelines issued by The Ministry of Education won't make much of a difference in reducing the academic burden on students if the standards for evaluating academic performance in mainstream Chinese society don't change.

"What standard do you use to measure the effects of education and a person's value? You may say the quality of education is good, but you are still measuring by the ultimate standard of examination scores, which determines which universities students will attend. My child will be regarded as a loser if he or she doesn't achieve high test scores. This problem has yet to be solved. Although you may advocate quality-oriented education, you still use the primary standard of examination results to evaluate each and every student. Of course, parents will follow this standard rather than any new concepts being promoted."

Kang Jian's opinion is echoed by Ms Heng, a parent in Xuzhou city, Jiangsu Province. While she would like her child to spend more time playing and learning about what they like, she has no choice but to join the majority of parents who push their children to do more exercises after school.

"If the authorities do not reform the senior high school and college entrance examinations, and the mechanism of how we select talents doesn't change, then the policy from the Ministry of Education may add to rather than relieve the burden on students."

The vicious cycle of unsuccessful burden relief has been repeated several times in Jiangsu and many other provinces in recent years where the education authorities tried to cut down the amount of homework. The only way to solve the problem is a comprehensive overhall of the education system.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.