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"Under the new college entrance examination, a large proportion of high school students choose science, resulting in a bias towards science and other subjects, and a serious shortage of teachers."

According to reports, the Education and Sports Bureau of Anfu County, Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province, recently revealed in response to a proposal by a CPPCC member that there are currently few graduates in relevant majors trained by colleges and universities, and there is a great demand for teachers in scarce subjects in various schools. The county has not been able to complete its recruitment plans for each scarce subject in recent years.

In order to resolve the serious shortage of teachers in scarce subjects in high schools, the local government has increased its efforts to introduce teachers in scarce subjects at the high school level, including vigorously implementing talent introduction plans and opening up a "green channel" for recruitment; increasing the enrollment plan for publicly funded normal students at provincial normal universities to train teachers in scarce subjects; and the provincial unified enrollment plan is biased towards scarce subjects.

In the process of implementing the new college entrance examination reform, Jiangxi adopted the "3+1+2" model. From 2021, all colleges and universities in the provinces that have implemented the new college entrance examination reform will enroll students and implement the subject selection requirement of "applying for science, engineering, agriculture, medicine and other majors requires physics and chemistry to be selected at the same time", and the enrollment plan for science and engineering in colleges and universities has an increasing trend. Therefore, under the "3+1+2" model, more students tend to choose physics as the first subject and then choose chemistry. This puts higher requirements on the physics and chemistry teachers at the high school level.

In this regard, local education departments and schools should strengthen the deployment of teachers in scarce subjects based on the needs of different subject teachers, and coordinate the deployment of teachers in other subjects to meet students' subject selection needs and improve the quality of high school education.

The new college entrance examination has been adjusted from the "3+3" model to the "3+1+2" model, and new subject selection requirements have been implemented in order to guide students to choose subjects more rationally. But overall, for some time, there has been a trend of more students choosing liberal arts in high schools in my country, and some students "escaping from science", which has led to an imbalance in subject selection. Since colleges and universities have fewer liberal arts enrollment plans than science and engineering enrollment plans, the college entrance examination competition for liberal arts candidates has become more intense.

In response to this phenomenon, there have been suggestions calling for more enrollment in liberal arts majors. This is obviously somewhat out of touch with reality. At present and in the future, my country will optimize and adjust the disciplines and majors of colleges and universities and increase the enrollment of science and engineering majors.

In March 2023, the Ministry of Education and five other departments issued a document requiring that by 2025, about 20% of the disciplines and majors of colleges and universities should be optimized and adjusted, a number of disciplines and majors that adapt to new technologies, new industries, new formats and new models should be newly established, and disciplines and majors that are not adapted to economic and social development should be eliminated; the proportion of basic disciplines, especially science and basic medicine undergraduate majors, should be further increased. This also requires local education departments and schools to accurately understand the spirit of the reform when implementing the new college entrance examination reform and provide guidance for students to choose subjects.

In reality, in some provinces that have implemented the new college entrance examination reform, county high schools still have a high proportion of students choosing history, politics and other subjects. This is because, although the new college entrance examination reform clearly abolished the division between arts and science, some schools, students and parents still treat the new college entrance examination reform with the division between arts and science. Some schools are still organizing subject selection and teaching according to the division between arts and science.

On the other hand, schools are concerned with helping students get higher scores rather than students' interests and long-term development. Since they believe it is difficult to get high scores in physics and chemistry, some schools tend to guide students to choose liberal arts subjects.

As a result, although students who choose liberal arts subjects get higher test scores, the competition for liberal arts students is fierce due to the "more science and less liberal arts" enrollment plan of colleges and universities. Recently, candidates in a province with a new college entrance examination complained that many liberal arts students failed to be admitted. Some self-media interpretations of this are exaggerated, but the high proportion of students who choose liberal arts subjects such as history is an important reason for this problem.

It is worth noting that in the process of organizing students to choose subjects, some middle schools start from the existing teachers rather than assigning teachers according to students' subject selection needs. Since offering science courses requires greater school investment, some high schools prefer more students to choose liberal arts subjects. In other words, the school conditions of high schools also restrict students' choices.

Guiding students to choose subjects rationally based on university admission policies, their own interests and abilities, and improving school conditions to meet students' subject selection requirements are extremely important for the smooth implementation of the new college entrance examination reform.

In May 2023, the Ministry of Education and other departments issued the "Opinions on Strengthening Science Work in Primary and Secondary School Education in the New Era", proposing to increase and strengthen a number of normal education majors for training science course teachers in primary and secondary schools, strengthen experimental teaching capabilities, and explore the selection and training of a group of high-level, comprehensive science teachers in high schools.

In this regard, the implementation of the new college entrance examination reform requires governments at all levels to increase their investment in education, guarantee the human and material resources needed to implement the reform, and especially increase support for the provision of teachers in scarce subjects. At the same time, it is also necessary to promote the transformation of educational concepts in basic education schools, fully guarantee students' right to choose subjects, reverse the utilitarian and short-sighted tendency of focusing only on scores, and pay attention to students' long-term development.