With teachers’ permission, students were allowed to bring “crib notes” with impunity in the final exams of Yuanling Primary School in Futian District. In this case, “crib notes” were not something students cheat with in exams, but a summary of how well students mastered the knowledge.

This move, a part of the school’s “5A Academic Assessment” starting from the fall semester of 2021, answered the call of the country’s “burden-reducing policies” — a set of guidelines introduced by the Chinese authorities to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students during the period of compulsory education.

According to the report, the final exams in the school were carried out in various forms. The first and second graders were examined by playing games related to the subject. Each student in the third to the sixth grades could bring a piece of A4 paper with their summaries of the key points of knowledge and the parts of knowledge that he or she has not fully grasped.

Hong Yuechun, vice principal of Yuanling Primary School, said, “We value students’ learning abilities more than their scores. A student who can summarize knowledge on a piece of A4 paper is capable of understanding and absorbing the knowledge, as well as enhancing his or her thinking ability, and such a student can cope with various subjects in the future.”

In terms of school reports, students only received their grading levels instead of specific scores. Each subject was evaluated by five aspects: subject awareness, subject competence, class performance, after-school performance, and final assessment. The final comprehensive assessment of the subject was determined by the number of A grades earned in the five aspects in order to inform students and parents with their strengths and weakness.

“We hope the change in assessment could bring the change in educational concept. Yuanling Primary School hopes to build a scientific and effective assessment system to contribute to the implementation of the ‘burden-reducing policies,’” Hong said.

(He Yue, Yang Mei)