Math tests for school admissions illegal

The Ministry of Education (MOE) announced Thursday that serious measures will be taken to break the profit chain between compulsory education admissions and advanced mathematics training schools, commonly known as Olympiad mathematics.

Although the law requires schools in the compulsory education stage to admit students in the community without any form of examination, entrance exams are widely used in prestigious schools across the country.

Uneven playing field

The MOE asked local education commissions to strengthen their supervision of admissions procedures and establish special reporting platforms to handle complaints. School presidents and local education officials found to be connected with encouraging private math training and compulsory education admissions will be punished.

Independently held, illegal admissions exams are used by famous schools across the country and normally contain math questions that are far above the level taught in school. Many students enroll in expensive after-school courses to achieve better scores and secure a spot in their dream schools.

Furthermore, prestigious schools often cooperate with training agencies to hold math competitions and "pre-selection classes" to identify higher-scoring students in advance.

"My sixth grade nephew is taking three pre-selection classes. I don't even understand some of his math questions when I tutor him," Guo Lei, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times.

Many college graduates, attracted by the high salary, work as math teachers at after-school training agencies.

"I've been doing this for four years and I try to introduce the beauty of math to my students, but I know most of them are taking the class for the sake of scores," a teacher with the Beijing-based Juren School told the Global Times.

Skirting the issue

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Education issued a strict ban on relations between private training programs and school admissions procedures in August last year, but agencies shed the term "Olympiad mathematics" from their descriptions and adopted terms like "fostering interest" or "advanced learning" to fly under government radar.

A consultant at Xueersi School, a large educational training agency in Beijing, told the Global Times that new math classes for the spring semester will begin next week at a price of 2,720 yuan ($436) for 15 three-hour sessions, and the slots are almost full.

Members of online education forums in China have compiled and posted the dates of upcoming admissions exams for prestigious schools, which continue the practice despite the law.

"Banning private mathematics programs is just a superficial measure. Other forms of competition will emerge as long as schools are selecting students based on test scores," commented Xiong Bingqi, a renowned education expert and deputy chief of the 21st Century Education Research Institute. "The root of the problem is the unbalanced resource distribution in compulsory education, and that's what the government should really work on."