Test grader removed after sharing essay

Materials related to marking the gaokao should not be revealed, ministry says

Anyone who grades national tests should not profit by sharing their standards for marking, the Ministry of Education said after a veteran test grader in Zhejiang province was removed from his post for publicly sharing a high school graduate's unconventional essay.

Graders for the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, should not bring any materials concerning the test, including answers, grading standards and students' answer sheets outside the grading room or share it with other people, said an official from the ministry's National Education Examinations Authority.

The ministry conducts training for all test graders every year and lays out specific requirements for hiring, management and supervision to make sure they understand and strictly follow such rules, the official said.

In a notice issued on Thursday, the Zhejiang Education Examinations Authority said Chen Jianxin, the leader of the essay grading team for the gaokao, seriously violated grading rules by disclosing and commenting on a student's exam paper without permission.

It decided to remove Chen from participating in future test grading of the gaokao and has started to investigate some of the "personal issues" netizens have raised about him, the notice said.

The full text of the essay, titled "Living in a Tree", and Chen's comments were published on the official WeChat account of a publication run by Zhejiang International Studies University on Aug 2.

According to Chen's comments, one grader had awarded the essay 39 points, while the other two had each scored it 55. Ultimately, however, the grading team had decided to give the composition the full 60 marks, putting it among only a handful of gaokao essays that can receive top marks each year.

The essay, which quoted European philosophers including Nietzsche, MacIntyre, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, soon aroused heated discussion on Chinese social media, with some finding it impressive for a high school graduate to have such high command of rarely used phrases and others lamenting that the essay was too abstract to comprehend and pretentiously bookish. The post has since been deleted.

According to media reports, Chen, an associate professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Zhejiang University, has been head of the province's composition grading team for the gaokao for 20 years. Chen, 66, has edited two gaokao essay writing guides that are sold on a number of domestic e-commerce platforms.

He has also hosted an online course for gaokao composition writing, priced at 199 yuan ($29).According to a promotional poster for the course, Chen oversees all essays that receive perfect scores. It further describes Chen as "a famous grader who teaches students how to score points on the gaokao essay".

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at National Institute of Education Sciences, said that it's definitely inappropriate for the leader of a composition grading team to publish how-to manuals for gaokao essay writing and seek profits from the position.

"They can't be both the coach and the referee," he said.