In Depth: Can China Provide Middle-Schoolers Long-Promised Exam Relief?

China's high school entrance exam, a longstanding source of immense academic pressure, is undergoing significant reform, particularly in Beijing, to reduce student stress and reevaluate the country's meritocratic admissions system. On June 24, Beijing unveiled a streamlined version of the entrance exam, reducing the number of scored subjects from 10 to 6 by removing history, geography, chemistry, and biology from the final tally. This lowered the exam's maximum score from 670 to 510. While these changes are part of a broader national effort to reduce academic stress, questions linger about whether the reforms will truly alleviate pressure or simply intensify competition in remaining core subjects like Chinese, math, English, and physics, as parents and experts express skepticism about the impact of these changes.[para. 1][para. 2][para. 3][para. 4]

The exam overhaul is a response to both promised and previously attempted reforms. Since 2016, the Ministry of Education has advocated for policies to reduce student stress and consolidate testing, but these reforms often backfired. The push for comprehensive evaluations led to “all-subject testing,” where students in most regions were evaluated on 10 or more subjects. The pressure, rather than decreasing, shifted to intense competition for small ranking advantages, resulting in measurable stress and sleep deprivation among students. Studies show 61% of Chinese children and adolescents are sleep-deprived, with high school students averaging just 6.5 hours of sleep per night. Daily routines often involve late-night study sessions across multiple subjects, contributing to widespread exhaustion.[para. 5][para. 6][para. 7][para. 8][para. 9][para. 10][para. 11][para. 12][para. 13][para. 14]

Despite policy rhetoric around broader evaluation, Chinese high school admissions remain predominantly score-based. In Beijing, comprehensive student evaluations—including ethics, health, arts, and social engagement—account for only 10 out of 510 points, which many parents dismiss as inconsequential. Comparisons with Japan highlight a more balanced admissions system, where 30% is based on broader subjects and non-cognitive skills, although some Chinese cities are experimenting with stricter behavioral or non-academic entry criteria. However, family wealth can enable affluent families to enhance evaluation scores through extracurricular programs, potentially deepening inequalities for lower-income students. As cities like Xi’an and Changsha follow Beijing's move to trim tested subjects, critics worry that non-tested subjects will become neglected, risking a narrowing of the curriculum. Some cities, like Changsha, are instituting minimum requirements for untested subjects to mitigate this risk.[para. 15][para. 16][para. 17][para. 18][para. 19][para. 20][para. 21][para. 22][para. 23][para. 24][para. 25][para. 26][para. 27]

The root of education anxiety in China traces to an imbalance: fiercely competitive admissions for limited top-school placements. Despite government efforts—such as raising the share of elite high school seats reserved for local students and expanding general high school admissions—workarounds remain common. Elite schools sometimes accelerate top middle school students into high school curricula in defiance of official guidelines. Many parents fear the vocational track, associated with blue-collar jobs and diminished social mobility, and strive for academic paths even as university graduates face employment difficulties. Yet with vocational enrollments dropping and a projected shortage of 30 million skilled technical workers, policymakers hope to elevate the status of vocational programs by expanding offerings and aiming for parity with academic pathways. However, these efforts will need time to take effect and will depend on societal changes in attitudes toward technical careers.[para. 28][para. 29][para. 30][para. 31][para. 32][para. 33][para. 34][para. 35][para. 36][para. 37][para. 38]

In conclusion, while Beijing and other cities have taken steps to reform the high school entrance exam system to address academic stress, deeply ingrained social and economic dynamics continue to drive intense competition for top schools, with reforms at risk of merely shifting, rather than solving, the core pressures faced by Chinese students.[para. 1][para. 2][para. 3][para. 4][para. 28][para. 29][para. 30][para. 31][para. 32][para. 33][para. 34][para. 35][para. 36][para. 37][para. 38]