Gaokao reform to end struggle between liberal arts and sciences

China has announced new plans for the national college entrance examination, or Gaokao.

The new round of reform sees significant adjustments on result evaluation system and enrollment mechanisms.

Under the new scheme, students are relieved from picking up a preference of majors, either liberal arts or sciences.

Meantime, their final Gaokao results will be divided into two parts.

One is the results on three major subjects, namely Chinese, Mathematics, and English, which are to be tested at a unified date. And for English, students are allowed to take two separate exams and submit their best results.

The other part is students' academic performances in high school, which include 14 subjects such as History, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, etc. Students will take a final test after finishing the subject. When they apply for a higher institution, they could select three among the 14 results based on the major they want to apply and their strengths.

For the moment, subjects in Gaokao are usually referred as "3+X". Three means Chinese, Mathematic and English, while X means a comprehensive test on either liberal arts or sciences.

Also in the reform is the enrollment mechanism. The plan says to develop a multidimensional enrollment system, which aims at pulling together Gaokao results, academic performances and students' overall qualities.

China's Ministry of Education has selected Shanghai Municipality and Zhejiang Province as pilot areas.

The two governments will publish a more detailed plan respectively by the end of this year.

The plan applies to students who are enrolled in this fall.

Other students, however, are submitted to the current system.