The picture shows an exam day near Maotanchang High School in Anhui Province. The school is one of the “cram schools” that have been dubbed “gaokao factories” by the media.

The chances of being admitted to college have reached 80 percent in most Chinese provinces, according to the Ministry of Education’s 2014 statistics, which means it will become increasingly easier to participate in the gaokao, the national college entrance exam. However, anxieties are growing among students and their parents.

As higher education grows in scale, access is becoming increasingly available to all social classes. But the unequal distribution of opportunities for excellent higher education is more evident. It directly impacts whether young students can achieve social mobility.

Reasons

In the social structure, the capacity of each stratum varies. A large number of people are at the margins of society, and it is hard for them to improve their situation. Due to polarization, the best educational resources remain concentrated in the middle and upper classes of society.

The phenomenon of “gaokao factories” hints at the uneven allocation of fundamental educational resources. Education is a mechanism for the reproduction of social class. Offering an example of the effects of exam-oriented education, gaokao factories are the result of individualized channels of social mobility.

Rural areas have fewer educational resources than cities, which means that the starting line for students from different areas is actually different. But in previous examinations, which were administered in a unified way, students from rural areas could be admitted to top universities through hard work. As the form became diversified, hard work became a less important factor in gaokao results. Family and regional educational resources are of increasing importance.

But in such an atmosphere, two schools in China’s remote areas were able to achieve “miracles:” Maotanchang High School in Anhui Province and Hengshui High School in Hebei Province. They are “cram schools” that specialize in preparing students for the gaokao. Students undergo nonstop lectures and exams every day in a militarized environment. Everything is subordinate to the goal of higher scores, so subjects untested in the gaokao are neglected. Therefore, they have been dubbed “gaokao factories” by the media.

The concept of the gaokao factory undoubtedly deviates from the values of elementary education and basic ideas of quality education in China. But rural areas are at a disadvantage when it comes to operating high schools, so students and their parents still put their faith in these gaokao factories located in counties and towns.

Of course, all parents want their children to develop in a happy environment. But restricted by family background and cultural resources, students in rural areas inevitably fall behind from the very beginning.

Lacking the rich resources of urban schools, local high schools in counties and towns have to implement a huge workload and teach to the test. Students in rural areas must work harder to achieve the same opportunities. In fact, the current criticism of the gaokao factory phenomenon turns a blind eye to the shortages of teachers and facilities.

Deficiencies

The gaokao is a competition between the countryside and the cities. Students in rural areas rely more on hard work and endure an application process that could take years to get a chance to enroll in higher education.

As the number of college graduates grows, a degree confers less of an advantage to its holder than it once did. Staying competitive in the job market today requires a degree from a top school. Without enough resources, students from rural areas are destined to do poorly on the entrance exams and admitted to less prestigious universities. When they graduate, they will be only able to secure low-paying jobs and live on the margins of the cities, continuing the cycle.

The existence of gaokao factories reflects the mentality of people at the bottom of society. They hope to somehow alter their seemingly inescapable destiny by scoring higher on the gaokao, but gaokao reform, to some extent, aggravates their anxiety about fair education.

Family background also has a remarkable influence on college admissions. Students whose parents are national and social administrators are 7.5 times likely to get a bonus point on the gaokao than those from rural areas, according to a report on fairness in education released by Tsinghua University in 2011. Families that lack social resources do not benefit from diversified forms of entrance examination. It is still hard for their children to access the best higher education.

For the gaokao, each college allocates a number of admission to every province in China. Students take the exam in the place where their hukou is registered. But the distribution is extremely imbalanced because each college will enroll more students from the province where it is located. In this way, students from big cities are more likely to be enrolled in famous colleges.

Shanghai took the lead when it independently assigned its own version of the gaokao in 2000, challenging the unified national exam, and many provinces followed suit. This type of reform offers more choices in curriculum but fails to address the imbalance caused by region-oriented enrollment and may even magnify the inequality.

Bonus point regulation put forward by the Ministry of Education encourages different characteristics of students in order to balance the huge share of points in evaluating students. But it has turned into a competition of family resources during the implementation.

Independent enrollment evaluates students from different perspectives. It advances reform of elementary education and aims to improve the overall ability of students. In fact, however, few students from rural areas and the bottom of society can pass the admission.

Solutions

Reform of curriculum in elementary education and gaokao reform addresses the interests of all social strata. Regardless of their cultural resources or social background, families follow closely any change in gaokao policy.

In 2014, Zhejiang Province and Shanghai started an integrated gaokao reform, aiming to improve access and find talented students. But for students from the bottom of society, a high gaokao score remains their best shot at a prosperous future.

Gaokao reform originated in big cities with advanced education systems. It is reasonable that urban elites criticize gaokao for its lack of imagination and creativity, its standardized format and its over-emphasis on rote memorization. However, a more flexible and open gaokao may hurt students in rural areas.

At present, urban and rural education systems apply identical curriculum and evaluation criteria, which are formulated based on urban culture. Even if students from the bottom of society can succeed through hard work, they cannot overcome the disadvantages brought by the shortage of cultural resources in their early development.

In the urban-rural dual structure, educational reform must take account of both efficiency and fairness and pay close attention to people from the countryside and the margins of society. The opinions of teachers from the county-town level and family members from the countryside should be seriously considered. Only in this way, can the “silent majority” be involved in the formulation of educational reform.

Fair education lays a foundation for social fairness. Equality of educational opportunity ensures reasonable social mobility, which prevents the ossification of social class. Gaokao reform must safeguard fairness and be considerate of socially vulnerable groups, so that students from the margins of society can receive the best education. At the same time, the government should compensate them with better educational resources on the basis of fair education.

Zhang Jizhou is from the School of Education at Ludong University in Shandong Province.