Exam reform a far cry from progress

But such an arrangement won't change the unified system of education - the exam and enrollment systems - and thus create two major problems:

First, basic education will remain exam oriented and students will still have to endeavor to improve their test scores, because colleges will continue to enroll them according to their academic scores. So, just by canceling the tests for liberal arts and science subjects, the authorities cannot open up enough avenues for students to get all-round education.

Second, since students have to study all the subjects for which they take exams, this will increase their burden. More importantly, if students are made to take exams for the subjects they choose in the first or second year of their senior middle school, they will by default come under pressure to prepare for the gaokao in advance.

The real problem lies in the enrollment system. Although the reform plan also mentions the enrollment system, it does not shed enough light on the issue. It's good to know that there will be independent enrollment after the gaokao since 2015. But whether or not it will break the centralized admission system depends on how the independent enrollment system is implemented by colleges.

We can learn a thing or two about an independent admission system from Hong Kong, where each college has its own criterion (or criteria) to enroll students, which, in turn, gives students the chance to seek admission to more than one college. Such a system offers more options to colleges to choose the students they would like to admit and students to seek out the college they want to study in.

If an independent college enrollment system only means colleges interviewing students who have cleared the gaokao - and admitting them on the strength of their scores both in the gaokao and interviews like some universities such as South University of Science and Technology in Shanghai and Zhejiang University in Zhejiang province are doing - it can hardly be described as a breakthrough.

The gaokao system reform should include the reform of the exam and admission systems as well, with the latter being the key to the success of the overall reform of the education system. Without a thorough reform of the admission system, the effect of reform of the exam system would be quite limited. Over the past two decades, education reform has focused on exam reform while preserving the centralized admission system, which can hardly be called progress.

But it is expected that the pilot projects in Shanghai and Zhejiang would achieve substantial progress in this direction and lead to in-depth reform of the education system.

The author is vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.