Want to know more on chinese education system

I don't know if the school system is integrated between all provinces, but I am surely tell you that in Guangzhou, elementary school lasts from 1-6, middle from 7-9, and high school from 10-12.

Yes, schools in China are hard. You are to take in the rule before taking in the concept behind it. And teachers are a lot stricter, with punishments like standing at the corner or hand-smacking, I think. But my cousin that get a big bruise ob his face for doing bad. It was not from a slap though, the teacher kinda.... can't describe the motion......

But homework is kind of like, pouring rain over you, except it's homework.

And 10th graders have this week-long physical camp where students are out of the house and are in military like uniforms running and exercising. (Mentioned somewhere here.)

people normally go to school at age of 6. 6 years of primary school, 3 years of middle school, and 3 years of high school. then normally 4 years of university, and some years of grad school.
first 9 years are supposed to be free, paid by the nation. but some still got no education in poor country part. then you need to take this hard exam to go to high school, where so many can't go, one, your studying is too bad, they don't take you, two, you are too poor to pay for high school. so some go to some sh*ty tech school, or starting to make a living. now the nation is trying to get a 12 year free education for everyone.
once you are in high school, you will start to prepare for uni. uni used to be paid by the nation, if you could pass the exam to uni. today, not really, almost everyone who could pay, could go to uni. that's where there are so many schools starting to call themselves univeristy. and chinese university graduates number is increasing like e^n, where n-> 8 (infinity). and the quality of uni students is decreasing like e^n, where n-> -8 (negative infinty). today, you throw a rock into chinese young people, it will hit 3 people, 2 actually went to uni, and 1 has a fake uni degree.
so, today, we have every kinda people taking "courses" in university. hookers, mafia, drug dealers, you name it.
in the next 20-30 years, china doesn't need anyone to take it over, it will destroy itself, with this new bunch of university students.

chinese uni student, you disgrace my nation and my people.

The educational system in China is a major vehicle for both inculcating values in and teaching needed skills to its people. Traditional Chinese culture attached great importance to education as a means of enhancing a person's worth and career. In the early 1950s the Chinese Communists worked hard to increase the country's rate of literacy, an effort that won them considerable support from the population. By the end of that decade, however, the government could no longer provide jobs adequate to meet the expectations of those who had acquired some formal schooling. Other pressing priorities squeezed educational budgets, and, of course, the anti-intellectualism inherent in the more radical mass campaign periods affected the status and quality of the educational effort. These conflicting pressures made educational policy a sensitive barometer of larger political trends and priorities. The shift to rapid and pragmatic economic development as the overriding national goal in the late 1970s quickly affected China's educational system.

The Chinese educational structure provides for six years of primary school, three years each of lower middle school and upper middle school, and four years in the standard university curriculum. All urban schools are financed by the state, while rural schools depend far more heavily on their own financial resources. Official policy stresses scholastic achievement, with particular emphasis on the natural sciences. A significant effort is made to enhance vocational training opportunities for students who do not attend a university. The quality of education that is available in the cities is generally far higher than that in the countryside, where relatively few students acquire even a secondary education.

The overall trend in Chinese education is toward fewer students and higher scholastic standards, resulting in a steeply hierarchical educational system. Only about one-third of the nation's primary school students gain access to some secondary education, while less than 2 percent ever attend a regular university. Only the best students are allowed to go beyond a primary school, and many secondary schools are closed because of a lack of students. For the overwhelming majority of students, admission to a university since 1977 has been based on competitive nationwide examinations, and attendance at a university is usually paid for by the government. In return, a university student has had to accept the job provided by the state upon graduation.

The system developed in the 1950s of setting up “key” urban schools that were given the best teachers, equipment, and students was re-established in the late 1970s. The inherently elitist values of such a system put enormous pressure on secondary-school administrators to improve the rate at which their graduates passed tests for admission into universities.

Six universities, all administered directly by the State Education Commission in Beijing, are the flagships of the Chinese higher educational system. They are Peking University, the leading nontechnical university; Tsinghua University, an institution that is oriented primarily toward engineering; People's University of China, the only major university founded after 1949; Nankai University in Tianjin, which is especially strong in the social sciences; Fudan University, a comprehensive institution in Shanghai; and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, the principal university of South China. In addition, every province has a key provincial university, and there are hundreds of other technical and comprehensive higher educational institutions in locations around the country. The University of Hong Kong is the oldest school in Hong Kong.

The damage done to China's human capital by the ravages of the Great Leap Forward and, especially, by the Cultural Revolution was so great that it has taken years to make up the loss. After the 1970s, however, China's educational system increasingly trained individuals in technical skills so that they could fulfil the needs of the advanced, modern sector of the economy. The social sciences and humanities also receive more attention than in earlier years, but the base in those disciplines is relatively weak—many leaders still view them with suspicion—and the resources devoted to them are thin.

PRC Ministry of Education

China Education and Research Network

List of universities in mainland China

I'm not Chinese, but I believe Peking University has been renamed Beijing University(correct me if I'm wrong).

tank, Peking is the old way in Chinese spelling in which to call Beijing. "Beijing" is the modern PinYin method to spell it. It's the same thing.

Originally Posted by tank

I'm not Chinese, but I believe Peking University has been renamed Beijing University(correct me if I'm wrong).

The official english version is still Peking University. It is one of the very few places that still uses the old spelling, perhaps to show it's old-ness.

i believe the only ones that still use "Peking" are those that are very old and traditional, such as the famous roasting duck restuarant in Beijing.

Now that Red Guard mentioned it, are the huge numbers of graduates in engineering really a threat to anyone? I mean comm'on, this is a place where quantity doesn't do much. And if the US government is "scared".......well, it's rather blunt...

i went 2 china during the summer of 2000 on a school exchange program for a month and boy i can tell u, chinese students face WAY more stress and WAY BIGGER work loads then the avg Canadian students. My home stay's son started school at 8am and didnt finish til 6:30pm.....students in canada usualy start around 8:30am-and end at around 3:00pm. I'm impressed at how well alot of chinese students can speak english quite decently.

Originally Posted by drunkhomer

My home stay's son started school at 8am and didnt finish til 6:30pm.....

my elementary school in china used to start at 7:30am, and there're all those extra classes after school. officially those classes were suppose to end at 5:30pm, but you know how chinese teachers are "dedicated" to work so we normally go off at 6:00 ~ 6:30pm. and that brings up another point, a lot of the teachers are too dedicated IMO and they would keep going into the recess and stuff, sometimes even taking time from the next class, then the teacher of the next class gets mad and takes time out of the next next class, etc. it was basically 4 hours without break... (we go home for lunch, morning session ends at 11:30 and afternoon session starts at 2:00, but that's just for my old elementary school).

Hmm...sounds pretty similiar to the Taiwanese education system...

By the time you get to middle school, you generally start school around 6:30~7:00, and don't get out until 6:00~7:00, depending on what classes you took. In addition, nearly everyone goes to a "bushiban" for extra classes, in fact most teachers assume you go so they incorporate some of the extra stuff you learn in the bushibans to the normal courses, making it pretty much mandatory.

In my mother's day they'd (teachers) often "borrow" athletics time to teach math...

Pretty strong emphasis on "education", if you can call cranking out students who are only good at taking tests education.

Of course it's been getting better recently, but apparently there are parallels that can be drawn with Chinese schools.

Originally Posted by drunkhomer

i went 2 china during the summer of 2000 on a school exchange program for a month and boy i can tell u, chinese students face WAY more stress and WAY BIGGER work loads then the avg Canadian students. My home stay's son started school at 8am and didnt finish til 6:30pm.....students in canada usualy start around 8:30am-and end at around 3:00pm. I'm impressed at how well alot of chinese students can speak english quite decently.

ja, trust me, today, chinese universities are screwed, so everyone who could pay the money could go to universities. chinese universities are nothing but sh*tpool now, well, over 50% of them are. they are not what they used to be, and educate people to be smart or anything. ever since 1989, the nation is not letting the high educated people to have some great affects in the country anymore, so they get all the screwed up people (does this count as swear?) into universities, therefore the "gold percentage" of an univeristy student is lowering and lowering. today chinese say "university students are just like dogs on the street". no respect, no halo, no nothing. well, they just let the halo go themselves anyway.

so you people say, oh they study so hard, ja right, they are still in the dreams. they ARE studying hard, and when they get into university, they will be milk under the hot sun, soon, spoiling.
trust me, i've seen it with my own eyes, i saw how my classmates in china in their first year of university, studying so hard and swearing to get into grad school, or going overseas and this and that. then the next year, you see them getting lazier, now in their forth year, all the talk about is playing baskball today, or playing internet game (such as warcraft) EVERY SINGLE DAY.

that's what i say, yes, i said it, and i will say it again, these people **** disgrace the name of university student, they put shame on the 5000 years of "scholars" of this nation. and i put a plague on them.
shame for me, i am here in canada, can't do anything about this............


i guess i am off topic, but........sign....delete this reply if you will, i might lost faith in this nation.

Hi Red Guard

What you say might be true, but I think you are being too harsh. University should not be only allow to few of smartest. I think it is a good thing that lot more people could attend college nowadays. It is nothing to shame of that today there are more chinese could go to University. It is just they should do more to improve the quality of teaching.

In the west they do have a better education system. There would be always college on the top, the second best, then good, then normal and the one just for fun. So everyone could go to college, but the quality of Universities are better manage.

China and Taiwan fellows the US system of education, which is good idea. But there would be many bump in the road, until they make it work better. It take time to built reputation for many of the Unversity, and I serious think you should not put university student above other people. Every people should be respective, not base on his education but his personality.

I still have faith for China evevthrough there are many problems that should be resolve.