The Chinese School System

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In China, there are nine years of compulsory education. During the first six years, students attend primary school, which is followed by another three years of junior secondary school, which begins when students are 12 years old. The Chinese school year is divided into two terms of 21 weeks. The first term starts in September and the second in March.

Students have about 10 weeks of holidays every year. The longest breaks are in summer, when students have four weeks of holidays, and in January or February, when they get three weeks off to celebrate the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year. Chinese students have classes from Monday to Friday, and the school day is usually about eight hours, from seven or eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. Most students also take extra classes after school and at the weekends, especially in maths and science, which are the most important subjects for their exams.

Most students also spend a lot of their free time studying as well. At the end of their last year of junior secondary school, when students are 15 years old, they must take an official exam called Chongqiao. Their results on this exam are extremely important, since students with the highest grades can attend the best senior secondary schools, and their parents will also pay less for their education. Students who don’t do very well cannot go to the senior school they prefer, and they may have to attend a private school, which is more expensive.

Students who fail the Chongqiao exam can go to special schools for basic job training. After passing the Chongqiao exam, Chinese students attend senior secondary schools for three or four years. Some schools offer more technical programmes, while others prepare students for the National University Entrance exam, or Gaokao. This is another very important exam, since it affects where students can go to university, what careers they can study, and how much their education will cost.

As a result, there is enormous pressure on senior students to do as well as possible. The Gaokao exam takes place in summer, and lasts for three days. About eight million Chinese students take the exam every year, but only three million of them are successful. Again, science and mathematics are a big part of this exam, along with Chinese and a foreign language, which is usually English.

The Gaokao exam is also very important for teachers, because if their students don’t do well, it’s not good for a teacher’s reputation.