The national examination system in P.R. China: Historical roots and present challenges

• In Event: Education policy making in East Asia

Abstract

China is the birthplace of national examination system. During the past thousands of years, national standardized exam was the crucial part of Chinese people’s daily lives. This paper mainly focuses on the current situation, the historical roots, and the potential educational impacts of the National College Entrance Examination Systems (NCEE, or the Gaokao System), the most popular and influential standardized test system in Mainland China, as well as the higher education admission policy, which is mainly examination-based. The first part of this paper introduces the present phenomena of the Gaokao system. The current higher education admission policies, which are strongly correlated to the exam system, will also be introduced. The unfairness of the current system and its impacts towards the high school education in nowadays China will also be discussed. The second part of paper reviews the historical roots of standardized test in China. The Imperial Examination System (Keju) in Ming and Qing Dynasty and its negative impacts towards the education process in ancient China will be discussed. Comparative studies will be done among the ancient and the modern systems. The similarities and differences between current Gaokao system and the ancient Imperial Examination System, as well as their direct and potential social influences, will be analyzed and compared. Finally, there will be brief conclusion, and further discuss will be made about the possible ways to improve the present system based on the analytical studies among its existing problems and historical roots.

Discussion and analytical studies in this paper is mainly based on the reviewing previous research and ideas, and studying real-world cases. The structures and details about the present Gaokao Examination and the ancient Imperial Examination System will be introduced. The argument and comparison among the unfairness of the present and ancient system, and their negative impacts towards students and education process will also be made. Previous comparative research among the unfairness of the present and ancient systems, as well as trade-off between efficiency and equality made by the modern and ancient policymakers, will also be reviewed. Papers that discuss the relevant educational theoretical positions, such as the role of test score in the process of education and evaluation of students’ performances, will also be mentioned. The official documents published by the Ministry of Education of P.R China, which introduce the frameworks of Gaokao Exam, will also be used. For the research in this paper, the metanarrative method will be used as the major philosophical core. As being pointed out in “Redeeming Modernity” by Ruth Hayhoe (2000), although been abhorred by the postmodernism, metanarrative still has its value in the field of social science, including comparative education, in the nowadays world and in the future. As defined by “The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism”, metanarrative can be described as a “grand narrative” of a “comprehensive explanation, a narrative about narratives of history, experience, or knowledge”, in order to “offers a society legitimation” through the anticipated completion (1995, p.186). Through reviewing and explaining the previous research articles, books, and reports which describing and discussing the national exam and admission process in China and their impacts in different historical periods through different perspectives, this paper is trying to explain the historical context and roots of the current situations, in order to find out the reasonable trends of its future development and reform.

The major purpose of this paper is to dig into the potential possible ways for optimizing the present Gaokao system in China through comparative studies among three perspectives: first, making comparison between the structures and details of the current and ancient examination system; second, comparing the similarities and differences of the negative influences of the current and ancient system towards the education process and students’ development; and finally, comparing the impacts of Gaokao System and the Imperial Examination System towards the educational values in modern and ancient China. Based on these three perspectives, this paper is trying to approach to the answer of the major question: What we can learn from the history and what such comparative researches might contribute to the present reform, in order to improve the fairness of the exam and the admission system, and to optimize the education process, students’ individual development, and the social mobility.

Author

• Hantian Wu, OISE/ University of Toronto