Wang yuanyuan

    An online post listing the “Top 50 High Schools in China” attracted wide attention on the Internet recently, but many netizens and education experts thought it was unreasonable.

    According to the post, the list was issued by the Compulife Institute of the University of Maryland in the United States. Beijing-based middle schools, such as the attached schools of People’s University, Qinghua University and Beijing Normal University, and Beijing No.4 Middle School and Beijing No.8 Middle School, were on the list.

    Many well-known middle schools such as Huanggang Middle School in Hubei Province and the Attached School of Beijing University were not on the list. No Shenzhen school was on it.

    The post said the list was compiled according to indexes such as the number of students enrolled by foreign universities, performances of students studying at overseas universities and evaluation by domestic universities.

    However, many netizens questioned the list.

    “Many well-known schools were not on the list. It was also not fair because schools in relatively undeveloped areas would have fewer students studying abroad, but that does not mean that these schools are not good. If this list was accurate, international schools would be the best in China because all of their students would study abroad,” said a netizen called “Dreamlander.”

    An unidentified netizen in Henan Province found that the 49th school on the list was Henan No.1 Middle School. “I was born in Henan and have lived here for more than 30 years and I have never heard about this school,” he said on the Internet.

    The University of Maryland said they had never heard of the list and would not issue a high school ranking list for other countries.

    The Compulife Institute is a private institute founded by a Taiwanese. The institute said the survey was taken based on several Chinese students’ personal opinions and was meant to be an unofficial reference.

    “This list was obviously not reasonable, because different areas had different education standards in China. Each university had different enrollment policies, so it was not fair to compare schools in different areas. Meanwhile, schools in developed areas such as Beijing and Shanghai surely had larger investments to send students abroad,” said Shang Jinhua, principal of Beijing No.5 Middle School.