重点中学扩张引热议

Wang Yuanyuan, Li Peixia

cheekywang@hotmail.com

Nantou Middle School in Nanshan District is expected to set up an education group and expand its operation at the start of the new semester. Meanwhile, Hongling Middle School in Futian District, which already has three campuses, is set to open a new campus with more than 6,000 students.

In recent years, an increasing number of schools in the city have been transformed into education groups with numerous campuses and departments.

Education experts said the move was aimed at building key school incubators and improving the quality of less distinguished schools in the city.

However, concerns have been raised by students and parents that schools were simply changing their names, not improving their quality.

“I think teaching quality is the most important thing in a school, not its name. If a school does not have good teachers who demand excellence from students, it will still be a weak school, no matter what. I think fostering students’ creativity is more important than changing the name,” said Yang Shuoling, a Senior 2 student at Shenzhen Experimental School.

Some parents are also worried about the expansion as it may make entry into the schools more competitive. “Having a key school name will make an ordinary school sound much more appealing, thus increasing the number of people who want to get in,” said Liu Ling, a mother of a 5-year-old.

Many older Shenzhen students did not approve of the reform, either.

“Ordinary schools are becoming subsidiaries of key schools. I graduated from Honghu Middle School, and I refuse to see it as a subsidiary of Shenzhen Middle School. All of my friends are the same. We still refer to those old schools as Huaqiang Middle School, Tielu Middle School and Guiyuan Middle School. They were not key schools, but they were parts of our childhoods,” said Zhuang Yibin, a bank worker in the city.