Test takers make final preparations for the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination in Fuyang, Anhui province, before the exam started on Saturday. [Photo by LU QIJIAN/CHINA DAILY]

Chinese students have been busy with exams this week, and many of the questions in their papers have left even their parents puzzled. Just a few days ago, a mother with a PhD was reportedly perplexed by her child’s kindergarten homework.

Amid all this comes the news that British education authorities have required students to learn the 12 by 12 multiplication table only before passing out of primary schools, something that is mandatory for pupils in grade 2 in China, raising the question: Is it necessary for Chinese students to study so much ahead of British children?

Many people have been appealing to education authorities to ease Chinese students' burden. The education authorities have responded by banning extra classes and reducing the number of tests.

But Chinese students still have to struggle. First, the distribution of compulsory education resources in China is unbalanced. So, to get their children admitted to “good” schools, parents overburden them with lessons during the preschool period. Although parents know that forcing their children to study beyond their capacity at a very early stage is not good for their health and mental development, they have no other choice.

Second, though the national college entrance examination has undergone reforms over the past years, the basic rule of admission based on test scores has not changed. In fact, the evaluation and admission system has made basic education more difficult, as the aim of tests is not to evaluate students’ capacity and level, but to rank them. No matter how many marks a student scores in an exam, what matters is only his/her ranking. And it’s common to hear parents blaming their children for getting 97 out of a maximum 100 points in an exam, because the score places them third from the bottom in their classes.

Under such a score-focused education system, students have to wrack their brains to reduce the number of errors even if an exam is not so difficult.