A TOTAL of 32 students at Shenzhen Fuyuan School in Bao’an District were confirmed to be gaokao immigrants, students illegally moving to other provinces for a better shot at the national college entrance exams (NCEE), or gaokao in pinyin, and were disqualified from attending the examinations in Shenzhen, according to the results of an investigation released by Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau on Sunday.

The Fuyuan school, a private school in Bao’an, was also punished by reducing its enrollment number of senior high students  in 2019 by 50 percent. The city’s education bureau also ordered the school board to undergo self-criticism and rectify the liability of relevant staff involved in fabricating documents to recruit students from a Hebei Province school that is closely related to Hengshui High School, which has been known in the country for its students scoring high in gaokao, to study for a short period of time in order to be able to take the gaokao at the Bao’an school.

The municipal and provincial education authorities set up a special team to investigate an allegation from Shenzhen parents about gaokao immigrants in late April. Some local parents became suspicious after finding out that six of the 10 students with the highest scores in the mock tests ahead of this year’s NCEE are from the Fuyuan school, which has been a below-average school in the city. According to some parents who were familiar with the matter, the Fuyuan school had illegally introduced a number of students from Hengshui No. 1 High School in Hebei, a private school co-founded by Hengshui High School.

The investigators interviewed school management, teachers and students, and checked the registration and hukou records of the suspected students, as well as their parents’ social insurance records. They found fabricated documents of the 32 students during the investigation and the students are not qualified to sit the NCEE in Shenzhen.

In order to raise academic performances and attract more students to study at the school, the Fuyuan school either brought A-list students from the Hebei school to take the gaokao in Shenzhen via household registration transfers to Shenzhen, or sent local students to study at the Hengshui school and then sit for the gaokao back in Shenzhen, according to earlier media reports.

As the scores required for admission to elite Chinese universities, like Peking University and Tsinghua University, in Guangdong are relatively lower than those in Hebei, some students in Hebei with promising scores within that range will fly to Fuyuan school to take the gaokao, the reports said. (Han Ximin)