Test-focused cram reviews are now available to Chinese kindergarteners in Wuhan, one of China’s major inland cities according to Chinese reporters in Wuhan [translation available at EdNewsChina]. Parents worried that they might – excuse me, their kids might – “lose at the starting line” can now enroll them in kindergarten prep classes.

These classes, known as “kindergarten linkage classes” (幼小衔接班), are promoted as stepping stones to success in elementary school. They provide one-on-one practice in subjects like English, math, and the strategic chess-like game called Go. Some training centers even offer interview practice to help kindergarteners ace the elementary school admission interviews.

At some training centers, spelling and pronunciation are the most popular classes. Fees vary between different training centers, ranging from 1,000RMB ($163) for short-term courses to 10,000 RMB ($1,627) for year-long courses.

These training centers claim to have connections to top schools and guarantee enrollment or money back. Schools, for their part, have disclaimed any relationship to such training centers.

Is elementary school admissions really this competitive in China? The Wuhan Department of Education, as it turns out, prohibits selective testing for elementary school enrollment. Each year, schools in the city hold a day of activities between teachers and students to determine “basic habits and current academic capabilities.” However, one school interviewed by the reporters said that these interactions with students “absolutely do not test post-kindergarten knowledge-level content such as arithmetic and character recognition.”

So where did these training centers and their classes come from, and why are parents so anxious to get in?

One possibility stated by the reporters of the original article is that training organizations ask students about the topics of these teacher-student interactions. They then extrapolate from the topics to produce the content for their training and inflate the academic requirements for elementary admissions. Parents unaware of this are then are tricked into pushing their children for an even earlier head start, in the belief that every little bit of extra knowledge will translate to a more competitive edge. In the process, they end up unnecessarily increasing the academic burden of their children.

Wuhan is not the only city offering these “kindergarten link classes.” A quick Baidu search shows that these classes are also popular offerings in other major Chinese cities, like Chengdu and Guangzhou. These classes could be just a fad, quick to rise in popularity and equally quickly to be taken down by education experts and critics. Or it could just be the next stage of evolution for the education industry in China.

For additional details, read a full translation of the Chinese article at Education News China.

The past week in China saw the suicide of two middle school students in Nanjing and the attempted suicide of one middle school student in Henan province. Coincidentally, China was in the midst of celebrating the Labor Day holiday and the Youth Day holiday.

Why are we seeing this tragic spike in student suicide at a time when students should be relaxing and celebrating their hard work and contributions with their families? The answer stems from the complicated struggle between the current testing-oriented system and educational reforms nationwide.

In the case of the two Nanjing students, teachers piled on homework during the Labor Day vacation period. When they didn’t finish their homework before the end of the short three-day vacation, the two students independently decided to take their own lives. In the case of the Henan student, a teacher called in his mother to discuss his poor performance in school and asked him to write a letter guaranteeing he would no longer misbehave. This happened on a Saturday, the May 4th Youth Day holiday.

What ties these three students together? They never got a chance to rest.

A three-day holiday might as well be spent in school if your teacher assigns you enough homework. In the case of the Henan boy, he was required to attend school for two of the three-day holiday anyway. There was also no rest for him on Youth Day, but instead, a humiliating day that included his mother kicking him out of frustration.

Most educators and parents do not wish to run students ragged, but the pressure to prepare students for the high-stakes high school and college entrance exams leaves them feeling like they have little choice. Though the China Ministry of Education (MOE) has prohibited elementary and middle schools from holding classes on weekends and holidays, many schools ignore these rules. In the case of the Henan school, the Vice Principal told reporters that between needing to prepare students for the entrance exams, conforming with the practices of other schools in the area, and meeting the expectations of parents for a rigorous curriculum, the school has “no choice” but to run the extra classes.

Numerous changes must take place in order to avoid the recurrence of these tragic events. At the most personal level, students and parents need to learn how to relieve stress at home, take psychological stability as a serious health concern, and recognize psychological instability if it begins to take shape. In local schools, teachers and staff should be trained in providing positive incentives (instead of punitive “letters of guarantee” and “misbehavior deposits“) to their students, in addition to hiring full-time school counselors for troubled students.

At the broadest level, and certainly most ambitiously, China must find a way to break away from the exam-oriented system. But it is exceedingly difficult to move away from a testing cycle that requires complete dedication of time and educational resources from day one in order for students to move on to the next level. As can be seen from the sad examples of the past week, gradual reforms like prohibition of weekend classes have only left students feeling more pressure from all parties, with little serious support from any one.

This guest post was written by Elliott Bernstein. Elliott Bernstein is Manager of Student Life at NYU Shanghai, as well as translator and purveyor of China’s education related news at Education News China (ednewschina.com).

Imagine if your educational future rode on your answer to questions like “Which city is more hazy: Beijing or Shanghai?” and “How many monsters does the novel Journey to the West depict?”

Oh, I know the first one. It’s Beijing, hands down. But hold on, it can’t be that simple. What about the other question, how many monsters does… wait what? Isn’t the whole story, one of China’s great classical literary works, about kicking monster butt all the way to India? Where do I even start counting?

Wait, wait, are these trick questions?

Students aspiring to China’s top universities recently found themselves baffled by these exact exam questions on independent admissions exams organized by the colleges. While the Gaokao, the notoriously difficult national college entrance exam, is still two months away, many universities in China began administering independent exams in 2003 to help make the admissions more comprehensive.

The above question, “Which city is more hazy: Beijing or Shanghai” was found on the entrance exam for Sun Yat-sen University, while Shanghai’s Fudan University favored the philosophical interrogation of monster nature.

Open questions on these independent exams prompt students to shirk more traditional, ‘correct’ responses, and to answer more creatively. But for many students, accustomed to the ‘right’ answer structure of these Chinese education system, the creativity and imagination these questions demand are perhaps more stressful than liberating.

CollegeStats.org has a great infographic recapping China’s $250 billion investment in higher education, with the NYTimes series on China’s Education Revolution as its source.

The infographic shows at a glance China’s high school matriculation rate over the past decades, its education spending, its focus on increased college matriculation, and the challenges the country will face. Very nicely done.

Growing numbers of Chinese students seeking admission to American schools is on everyone’s lips these day. In a recent podcast interview with China-based The Economic Observer, Vericant co-founders Nicki Fung and Kelly Yang sat down with host Eric Fish to chat about the current climate of Chinese students heading overseas for study, and the issues faced by these students.

In the conversation that follows, Nicki and Kelly also discuss how the Vericant interview helps to resolve these issues and why our interviews serve both students and schools in the application process.

Please check out the podcast!

You might wonder why the Vericant Interview focuses so much on students’ personalities rather than just their academic record. As anyone knows who has spent a semester or a year studying in another country, studying abroad can be a life-changing experience. What you get from the experience isn’t just what your destination has to offer, but also what you’re ready to get out of it.

The experience leaves an deeper imprint when you’re spending not just a year, but four years abroad. For the past decade, that’s what a lot of Chinese students have been doing at the college level. Now, with kids as young as 12 looking across the waters at the high school experience, schools have to consider a lot more in the student than just academic track record.

Leaving home for the first time to encounter new ideas and new cultures is both exciting and challenging. How much more so when you’re still a teenager just starting to figure yourself out?

Schools look for a degree of independent thought, resilience and maturity alongside academic performance, because they know that being away from home for such a long time is really, really tough. If Chinese families are serious about sending their only child abroad, they too have to examine the school for the right fit.

This is why Vericant’s interviews emphasize the importance of showcasing a student’s personality. Our interview questions offer a penetrating look into a student’s personality, adding verified information on top of their stellar academic and extracurricular records.

Too often we think of studying abroad as just an educational experience that also broadens cultural perspective, as an end rather than a journey. But let’s not underestimate the role that personality can play in the study-abroad experience as well, or the role that the study abroad experience can play in shaping personality, especially at a time of life that is as formative as high school.

American author Kurt Vonnegut once said, ‘High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.’ In a variety of ways, high school has an even greater influence upon an individual’s personality than does college.

As more Chinese families are choosing to give their only child an American or Canadian high school experience, we’re proud to be the only video interview specifically designed to give students a platform to showcase not only their language abilities but also their personalities to schools. (You can read what 36Kr.com has to say about us here in English translation, courtesy of Elliott Bernstein at Education News China.)

Why do we pride ourselves on our focus on students’ personalities at the high school level? Read more here.

Just as admissions aren’t based solely on a student’s test scores, schools are equally difficult to give overall ratings to. Rankings is one of those things nobody claims to like, but everyone gets a secret thrill from finding out where you fall on the totem poll.

FindingSchool.net is a Chinese website devoted to helping students learn more about American high schools, kind of like AdmissionsQuest, and one of the biggest sections on their website is devoted to school rankings. They ranks schools in order of overall popularity with students (based on user-interactions on their site) and in order of the percentage of international students. They also rank schools based on average SAT scores, SSAT scores, tuition, and number of AP classes available.

Below is a list of the 50 schools most popular with Chinese families, based on FindingSchool.net’s rankings. Not surprisingly, brand-name schools like Deerfield and Phillips Andover occupy the top half of the list. (If you’re interested in a particular school’s popularity, you can find a complete list of boarding schools “hot” with Chinese.)

This is an issue of Inside China Ed, a monthly news digest available through the Vericant newsletter. All Inside China Ed newsletters are posted to the Vericant Blog a week after it is sent to our newsletter subscribers. If you would like to receive the Inside China Ed newsletter in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter – it’s fast, easy, and best of all, free!

Inside China Ed – February “Pressure” Edition, 2013 (004)

Scientists recently published astounding research on the way kids handle pressure. Some thrive in the face of pressure to perform on high-stakes tests, while others crumble. In an era when a child’s academic future has never been more dependent upon their test-taking abilities, kids are either warriors or worriers.

Pressure is the theme of this month’s newsletter. In China at least, all roads – or fingers – point back to China’s Gaokao-centered education system.

Keith Bradsher’s Education Revolution series thoroughly documents the social, political and economic pressures exerted by China’s education system. We’ve written about the stress of the Gaokao before, but Mr. Bradsher really goes all out to examine the tough questions.

Questions like “Why do Chinese parents bet it all on their child’s college education ?” “Why is the value of a college degree in decline?“ What are the problems of the Chinese education system and why is it going to affect the whole society?” When Mr. Bradsher’s through with you, you’ll understand why any attempt by US education to imitate that of China is, simply, a bad idea.

Pressure also helps answer the question, “What exactly is the relationship between application fraud from China’s study abroad population and China’s education system?” And what’s up with the lock and chain on those library seats? We knew getting a seat in China’s top universities was hard, but who knew you’d have to fight for study spaces too?

While the pot brews on this side of the Pacific, attendees at the Association of International Education Administrator’s annual conference have been worrying too. As universities take on more full-pay students from abroad, they face greater challenges in creating sustained and meaningful cross-cultural interactions between their international and domestic students.

Yet, as one participant points out, schools sometimes “underestimate [the] pressure [to succeed and do well], and apply a different kind of meaning to the experience that we perceive a student is having.”

Indeed, though Chinese high school students still dream of college in the U.S., there is quite a bit ofuncertainty about the value of a foreign degree. After all, what good is a college degree if it won’t get you the jobs you want?

Also Recommended

- Cheating or Not - Why do so many Chinese students have close brushes with plagiarism? Writer Helen Gao looks at the academic honor code – or its lack of – in China.

LINKS (in order of appearance)

- Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart  - Worriers or warriors? How kids handle pressure in the age of high-stakes tests.

- The Gaokao Highway to Hell - Economic Observer journalist Eric Fish blogs about his personal encounter with a suffering Gaokao prisoner.

- Invitation to a Dialogue: Skipping 12th Grade - Doing something more with senior year, in an education system that has college admissions wrapped up by March.

- Education Revolution - A New York Time series on the promises and challenges that China faces as it educates its citizens more broadly.

- Gaokao Begins: What the Annual Exam is Like for Students

- In China, Families Bet It All on College for Their Children - Keith Bradsher’s Education Revolution, Part III.

- Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks to Factory Jobs - Keith Bradsher’s Education Revolution, Part II.

- Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates - Keith Bradsher’s Education Revolution, Part I.

- US Education in Chinese Lockstep? Bad Move  - Why US and Chinese education systems are aiming at what the other is trying to give up, and why it’s a bad idea.

- Why Do You Want to Go Abroad? - Why China’s Gaokao-centered education system is partly responsible for application fraud.

- A Different Kind of Occupy Movement - Students occupy study space with tape & chains, some even offering hundreds of RMB for a seat (translation courtesy of Elliott Bernstein at Education News China).

- Strangers in a Strange Land - The difficulties of encouraging meaningful interactions between American and international students.

- For Chinese Studying in the US, Graduating into an Uncertain Future

Rankings aren’t supposed to be important when it comes to choosing a school. When comparing boarding schools, which embrace a diversity of educational approaches and environments, finding the right “fit” for each students is more important than overall ranking. Ideally, theres a right place for every student.

For Chinese students, however, a more important piece of information is which schools are top destinations for their peers that admissions cycle. An informal poll conducted by a Chinese student last month asked Internet-surfing peers which schools they had applied to, presumably to see how competitive the application pool was for Fall 2013 admission.

The list is as follows, limited to 50 schools:

We should caution that this informal poll took in about 900 votes spread out over a long list of schools, so the 10 or 20 schools with the most votes didn’t receive a significantly higher number of votes than other schools.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how these students voted. (It certainly would have been interesting to see a poll broken down into rankings based on things like college placement, international student ratio, or availability of ESL classes.) However, this popularity contest had one informal function for the students: to gauge their own chances of admission.

The schools to receive the most votes were perceived as more likely to be competitive. At least, that’s how some participants and bystanders seemed to feel about the numbers. A few commenters wailed about how competitive their favored school was, begging others not to apply and take their places. (Remember, these are teens.)

Meanwhile, as boarding schools become increasingly competitive, more Chinese students are chattering about day schools. Perhaps as Chinese students and families become more familiar with the concept of day schools, there will be a place for every student who wishes to go abroad.