10 million sit for the world's biggest exam
- Source: The Global Times
- [06:52 June 08 2009]
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Students and their families in Rui’an in east China’s Zhejiang Province, walk home yesterday after finishing the first day of the National College Entrance Examination. About 10 million Chinese students are sitting this year for the world’s largest annual examination. Photo: Xinhua
By Liang Chen
More than 10 million Chinese high school students yesterday began the three-day “battle to determine their fate” – the nickname for the annual national college entrance exams – amid concerns about flu and cheating.
This year, the average college admission rate is expected to reach 62 percent, 5 percent higher than last year, according to the Ministry of Education. With the admission percentage increasing every year, college students are no longer considered as elite as they were 20 years ago, but the exams remain the fairest means of determining social mobility, scholars note.
Although the number of candidates is down 3.8 percent from last year – the first decline in seven years – China’s gaokao, the college entrance examination, is still the world’s largest.
And this year, many measures have been taken to guarantee the tests go smoothly.
To provide cooler weather for the examinees, many cities such as those in Yibin of Southwestern Sichuan Province shot canisters of silver iodine into the gathering clouds Saturday to enhance rainfall over the city. And it worked, with rain the night before the exam dropping the temperature from nearly 40 degrees centigrade to 26 degrees.
Meanwhile, in Beijing, for the first time, vehicles for transporting the test papers were monitored by the Global Positioning System, with ad-hoc policemen being sent to guard the papers around the clock.
Beijing also took traffic-control measures to ensure the timely arrival of the papers at all the test centers. Motor vehicles are prohibited from honking their horns around the test sites during the exam to offer students quiet.
Besides, the exam supervisors were forbidden to wear perfumes or high heels to avoid distracting the examinees.
And in Nanning city in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, more than 1,500 taxi drivers offered free rides to students who presented their test ID cards.
To avoid heavy traffic, a student’s father in Beijing said he meticulously searched out the “perfect route,” block by block, Saturday, taking notes on the traffic on every road. He said he “managed to control the margin for time error to within a minute.”
Due to the recent H1N1 flu, all examinees were required to have their body temperature checked before entering the rooms.
Separate exam rooms were prepared for candidates showing flu or fever symptoms, but none had been used as of yesterday morning.
Parents of some students chose to book hotel rooms near the exam venues in advance to avoid traffic and reduce the stress on their children.