THE country’s annual college entrance exams began Friday as an estimated 10 million students sat the critical exams needed to pursue their higher education.

The exams lasted two days generally but due to different arrangements, in some provincial regions it might run until yesterday, the Ministry of Education said.

The number of students applying to take the exams this year is the highest since 2010, according to an annual report published by the Eol website, an education information service provider.

Started in 1952, the national college entrance exams have provided young people with a valuable opportunity to see a bigger world and realize their aspirations. Its evolution is a symbol of China’s education development.

Between 1952 and 1965, one year before it was halted because of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the exams were taken by a small number of people due to limited higher education resources. There were about 200 colleges in China in the early 1950s.

In 1977 when the exams were resumed, a record 5.7 million people took the exam, including high school graduates, farmers and factory workers, making it very competitive.

China’s gross higher education enrollment rate was 1.4 percent in 1978 and soared to 48.1 percent in 2018.

According to the Ministry of Education, there were 38.33 million students of higher education in China in 2018, up from 6.42 million in 1998 and about 117,000 in 1949.

In 1949, China’s illiteracy rate stood at 80 percent and it reached 95 percent among people of many ethnic minority groups. The illiteracy rate among young people dropped to 1.08 percent in 2010.

In 2018, the net enrollment rate of primary schools nationwide reached 99.95 percent and that of high schools was 88.8 percent.

“China’s education development has entered a new phase,” said Xiong Bingqi, vice president of 21st Century Education Research Institute, a leading educational think-tank in China. “The country had spent great efforts and resources in expanding the scale of the education system to cover as many people as possible.” 

(Xinhua)