From “single” to “diversified”: The particularity and periodicity of Chinese Gaokao mode

• In Event: Poster Session: Contemporary issues in higher education in East Asian contexts

Abstract

Though with many drawbacks, ‘Single Gaokao Mode’ had been used in college admission for 51 years in China since 1952 for some reason. However, recently, China has initiated a new round of Gaokao reform, which aimed at establishing a comprehensive admission and recruit mechanism based on the unified Gaokao and high school academic level test. This paper is trying to find out the contributing reasons of the existence of ‘Single Gaokao Mode’ and the emergence of ‘Diversified Gaokao Mode’.

In order to understand the ‘Single Gaokao Mode’ more deeply, a comparative perspective is adopted in this research. By comparing with other college admission modes in six western and eastern countries and regions, including USA, UK, Russia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, we can find that there are some particularities of Chinese “Single Gaokao mode” showed in three dimensions: 1) in the dimension of unified test, all the selected places have unified test, though some test are needed and some can be optional for admission. However, in China, there was only one time for test-takers taking Gaokao. Besides, the professional development level of the test-holder in China was far behind other cases; 2) in the dimension of admission criteria and universities’ admission autonomy, other countries and regions all have multiple standards, and universities and colleges have abundant autonomy to decide how to recruit prospective students. In China, unified Gaokao score basically became the single yardstick in all post-secondary institutions, and therefore, universities and colleges had very limited autonomy in admission; 3) in the dimension of the relationship between admission autonomy and college entrance test and the relationship between admission system and K-12 education (especially education in high school), in China, the former relationship can be described as coupled other than separated in other places, while the latter relationship can be described as one-way impact other than double-way interact in other places.

Though Chinese ‘Single Gaokao Mode’ seemd so different from other modes, the essence of particularities was that the attribute of social test goes beyond the attribute of educational test. Social test means a test who needs to hold society accountability and meets social needs, like maintaining social justice and stability, while educational test is only a test for institutions select prospective students and for students decide to go which institution as well. This essence was reflected by many phenomenon in China, like the implementation of ‘parallel application’, and many universities and colleges actively forgone the limited admission autonomy.

The existence of “Single Gaokao Mode” was rational because it adapted itself to China’s social environment and educational environment in the specific period. In the perspective of social environment, culture factors, which emphasize on human relationship and academic performance other than technical performance and being lack of honesty as well, had the most important influence to the emergence and development of “Single Gaokao Mode”, while political, economical, legal, market factors all had contributions in this issue. In the perspective of educational environment, weak strength of Chinese higher education system, like rare higher education resources with high quality and the huge regional disparities of post-secondary institutions. Therefore, in some sense, we can say Chinese society choose the “Single Gaokao Mode” actively in that stage under the combined effect of social environment and educational environment. Strengthen the attribute of educational test should be the core principle of conducting the “Diversified Gaokao Mode” reform.

Author

• Yuan Wan, Xiamen University