MOE wants to broaden gaokao access

The Ministry of Education (MOE) is sending inspection teams to push Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong to come up with new policies that open the national college entrance examinations, or gaokao, to students of long-term non-residents of those cities.

The MOE has set a deadline of the end of this year for all education authorities to develop policies that will allow students whose parents do not possess a local hukou or permanent residents card for the city where they received their high school education. Only six provinces have submitted plans for expanding access to the gaokao of non-residents.　

Du Yubo, vice minister of the MOE, said at a recent ministry-level meeting that the inspection teams will help major cities to address the balance between resource constraints, quality education and equality of access.

Yuan Guiren, minister of the MOE, announced in March that local education authorities must address the inequity in education opportunity. Currently, students whose parents are from outside the jurisdiction in which they attend public school, must return to their parent's home to take the gaokao even when they have not studied there for many years.

Last week both Beijing and Guangdong published their new gaokao registration notices, which still deny access to next June's exam to children of non-residents in the cities.

"We don't have new information, but we will strictly implement whatever new policies that are issued," a staffer with the Beijing Education Examination Authority, who asked not to be named, told the Global Times Monday.

The Beijing Municipal Education Commission could not be reached for comments.

Parents on both sides of the debate have expressed strong opinions on Sina Weibo. Holders of a big city hukou complain that opening the gaokao to outsiders will lower the quality of education.

Zhang Xin, a Beijing-based book editor opposes the integration of nonresident students in the city's gaokao, suggesting students will swarm into first-class cities to attend school and most won't return home.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said stronger measures from the national level are needed to open the exam to outsiders.