Education

More students choose to study abroad

By Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-08 07:58

Senior grade three students register online for the gaokao at Attached Middle School of China Central Academy of Fine Arts on Dec 1, 2010 in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily

Beijing Chaoyang No 2 Hospital welcomes the first group of students from Beijing No 94 Middle School for their first physical examination for the gaokao on March 1.

The number of Beijing students sitting the gaokao, the national college entrance examination, will hit a record low this year.

As of Dec 5, the deadline for applications, just 76,000 students had signed up to take the test, almost 6 percent down on 2010.

It is the fifth year in a row that numbers have fallen, and this year will mark the lowest ever attendance, said Gao Fuqin, deputy director of the Beijing Education Examination Authority (BEEA).

Education specialists attribute the popularity of studying abroad and a decline in the birth rate during the mid-1990s as the primary reasons for fewer youngsters seeking university education.

The number of applicants is expected to continue to drop in the next few years.

Tian Yuan, a senior teacher with No 101 Middle School in Haidian district, told METRO that her school has a specialized class for students who do not want to take the gaokao and plan to study abroad instead, in which English courses and SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) coaching are provided.

She said the class had about 20 students during the last school year and the number doubled this year.

"In the beginning, only a few students chose not to sit the gaokao and to study abroad instead, now there are more and more," she said. "A very promising student of mine who would most likely score the school's highest points in the gaokao has received a number of offers from top universities in the United States and has decided to study at the University of California. I think it's a pity."

Studying in a foreign country is becoming an increasingly popular choice for many high school students. Only 200 or so students in China took the SAT in 2002, by 2009 the number had risen to 15,000, according to China Education Daily.

To accommodate this trend many other top middle schools have also introduced special classes for students who intend to study overseas, including No 4 and No 8 in Xicheng district and No 11 in Dongcheng district.

Another reason the number of university applicants is decreasing is there are fewer senior high school students.

Chen Wei, professor of demography at Renmin University of China, predicted that the number of 18-year-olds in Beijing will fall from a peak of 120,000 in 2009 to a low of 70,000 in 2020.

This year, 100,400 people in Beijing will reach the age of 18, a decline of 12,000 than a year before.

However, fewer attendees doesn't equate to less competition and an easier exam.

The difficulty of the national college examination will be more or less the same as previous years because a prototype to measure the exam's level of difficulty has been established, said Gao.

"A dozen university professors and middle school teachers will get together to compose the exam questions and it will be reviewed several times to make sure it has the same level of difficulty every year," he said.

Gao said this year's university enrollment rate will be around 48.5 percent and tertiary college enrollment rate will be around 39.5 percent, which is similar to previous years.