深圳高中学位充足

Wang Yuanyuan

Students and parents were told not to worry about an alleged shortage of places at high schools by the city's Education Bureau last week.

About 56,900 students applied for the approximately 57,000 high school places in Shenzhen this year, according to Fan Kun, vice director of the bureau.

Some parents said they heard there were limited places at the city's regular high schools and were worried that students who did not do well in the entrance examination could only go to technical high schools.

"I heard only about 50 percent of Junior 3 students could study in high school, so I am worried about my daughter as she did not perform well in the examination. If a student can not go to high school, it will be extremely difficult for him/her to get to university," a mother named Zhou Lijuan said.

Fan said what Zhou had heard was "not true."

"The city's public high schools offered about 28,000 seats, accounting for more than 50 percent of this year's Junior 3 students. The private high schools also offered more than 10,000 seats, so about 70 percent of Shenzhen children would have chance to enter regular high schools," he said.

The city's public regular high schools increased about 6,500 places in total this year and 9,000 new places would be offered next year. According to the plan, the city will add 25,000 places at public high schools by 2015, Fan said.