news

On September 10, 2019, in Beijing, students from Cuiwei Primary School in Haidian District walked to campus during the morning rush hour. (Photo by Visual China)

Sending her child to a "terrible school" with her own hands was the thing that made He Yuan toss and turn in bed the most in early June 2024.

As a mother in Haidian, He Yuan got her eldest daughter into the best middle school in Beijing five years ago through "special recruitment". But five years later, when her youngest son was promoted from primary school to junior high school, He Yuan "failed".

"Dianzhao", which means "enrollment by name", is a key term in the transition from primary school to junior high school in Haidian District, Beijing. It means that some schools use various means to lock in and recruit top students before computer allocation of admission, in order to widen the gap in student quality with ordinary schools.

The admission results of the "First School" announced on June 5 showed that He Yuan's son was admitted to Beijing Experimental School. Judging from the introduction alone, this school has a long history and an excellent reputation. Its predecessor was the Xiangshan Charity Home founded by the famous philanthropist Xiong Xiling in 1920. It has a long list of titles such as the National Science Education Experimental Base and the Ministry of Education's Key Research Base for Humanities and Social Sciences.

However, these are not enough to make it a good school in the eyes of parents.

The evaluation criteria circulated among the people believe that among the 68 public junior high schools and 14 private junior high schools in Haidian District, Beijing, Beijing Experimental School can only be ranked at the bottom, and is recognized as a "pit school". In contrast, there are six "excellent schools" known as the "Six Little Strongs", including the Affiliated High School of Renmin University of China, the Affiliated High School of Tsinghua University, and Beijing No. 11 School. The high school departments of the "Six Little Strongs" have a first-class admission rate of more than 90%. Similar lists of excellent schools also exist in other districts of Beijing. The admission rate is almost the most important measurement indicator.

In the past, "targeted recruitment" was an important means of recruiting students for some elite schools in Beijing. On May 15, 2024, CCTV's "Focus Interview" revealed that a certain educational institution in Beijing cooperated with some schools to lock in and recruit top students in advance through illegal means such as examinations, competitions, and resume screening.

Two days later, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission issued a notice, naming Beijing Mingcheng Foreign Language School and Chen Jinglun Middle School as two schools that violated the transparent enrollment requirements and demanding rectification. The notice also stated, "Warning reminders and talks will be held in some key areas... and special inspections and rectifications will be carried out throughout the city, school campus activity management will be strengthened, and all campus activities related to compulsory education enrollment or disguised enrollment will be resolutely prohibited."

He Yuan's son's transition from primary school to junior high school happened to coincide with the "first year of sunshine enrollment."

“Haidian is very tidal”

The ground is full of black, gray and brown, and jackets and sneakers are everywhere. It is isolated from fashion, but it gathers a quarter of the country's academicians, university professors and Haidian mothers who have made education their lifelong career here. This is the content of the promotional video "Haidian is very fashionable" released by the Haidian Cyberspace Administration at the end of July 2024.

The pursuit of education and knowledge is like a wave that sweeps everyone away, leaving no room for preparation.

He Yuan is just like this. At the beginning of the century, she was admitted to a 211 university in Beijing from other places, studied all the way to a doctorate, and then stayed at the school to teach, and set up her own family in Chaoyang District. In April 2016, her eldest daughter, who was in the third grade of elementary school, suddenly said that she didn't like playing the piano, but liked mathematics. At that time, the Mathematical Olympiad and information competitions were only the patents of Haidian mothers. Chaoyang mothers were more inclined to cultivate their children's specialties in playing the piano and playing ball.

He Yuan respected her daughter's idea. That spring, she found a college tutor who taught her daughter math for two hours every weekend. After more than a month, the tutor told her that her daughter had learned all the knowledge points from the third grade to the sixth grade, and suggested that she take her child to Olympiad math classes.

At that time, it was a well-known secret that Mathematical Olympiad was linked to further education. According to statistics from experts, the annual profit of the Mathematical Olympiad industry in Beijing alone was more than 2 billion yuan.

The education authorities soon issued policies to curb the Mathematical Olympiad. In August 2012, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission said it would resolutely crack down on the practice of linking Mathematical Olympiad scores with school enrollment, and announced that all training related to the Mathematical Olympiad would be suspended from October 31 of that year. As soon as the words were spoken, the Mathematical Olympiad returned in the form of "Expanding Minds" and "Happy Mathematics" when school started in September.

In the summer of 2016, He Yuan took her daughter to a math training institution in Haidian. After the lecture, the teacher asked He Yuan which school her daughter attended. When he heard that her daughter attended Chaoyang, he immediately asked her to wait a while, as he had to receive parents from the "top schools" in Haidian District first. "It meant that they didn't bother to pay attention to me because I was from Chaoyang, and parents in Chaoyang didn't care about their children's studies at all," He Yuan recalled.

After entering Inspur Center in a "discriminated" state, He Yuan began to send her daughter to the Olympiad class, spending two hours every day commuting between Chaoyang and Haidian, and another two hours to complete the small class worth 1,200 yuan, or the one-on-one class worth 3,000 yuan. After six months of training, her daughter, who was already in the fourth grade, participated in the five major Olympiad competitions in the primary school stage, namely the Yingchun Cup, Hua Cup, Zoumei Cup, Hope Cup and IMC International Mathematics Competition, and won awards in all of them.

"We won third prize in the Hua Cup, second prize in the Yingchun Cup, and first prize in the others." When He Yuan's daughter participated in the competition again in the fifth grade, she won first prize in both the Hua Cup and Yingchun Cup.

With such impressive results, He Yuan's daughter is only one step away from being admitted to a top school in Haidian.

The rise of elite schools and the birth of point-based recruitment

Let’s go back 40 years. In 1984, Zhongguancun in Haidian was full of farmland, and Renmin University High School was just a second-rate middle school. No one could have predicted that a few years later, parents all over Beijing would be scrambling to send their children to study here.

In 1978, in order to implement the central government's directive of "producing talents early, producing more talents, and producing talents quickly", the University of Science and Technology of China established the first class for the young in China. Discovering and studying children with extraordinary intelligence became a trend across the country.

Renmin University High School was also infected by this trend. In 1985, the school cooperated with the Center for Gifted Children of the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to recruit 40 students to form the first experimental class for gifted children. Liu Pengzhi, a mathematics teacher who later served as the principal of the school, served as the class teacher. In the same year, Renmin University High School established the Beijing Hua Luogeng Mathematics School. Its elementary school department was an off-campus training, and the middle school department was set up in the middle and high schools of Renmin University High School in the form of classes, which actually became a channel for Renmin University High School to select high-quality students. This is the earliest "pit class". Entering this class is equivalent to occupying a "pit" in Renmin University High School in advance.

Students in the experimental class of Renmin University High School quickly distinguished themselves in the high school entrance examination and some mathematics competitions, but it was the college entrance examination that really made this school famous.

In the early 1990s, there were only two top-notch high schools in Beijing - Beijing No. 4 High School and the Experimental High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, both located in Xicheng District.

But in 1997, the situation changed. According to the history of Renmin University High School, 28 graduates were admitted to Tsinghua University, 34 to Peking University, and 241 to key universities. These data made Renmin University High School famous. After entering the 21st century, the number of high-scoring students and students admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University ranked first in the city all year round.

The source of students is the decisive factor affecting the admission rate. Schools select the best students mainly for the admission rate. But why do Chinese public schools strive for the admission rate? In an interview with the media in February 2024, Tang Jiangpeng, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice president of the Chinese Society of Education, frankly admitted that the admission rate has a great impact on schools. It is related to the quality of students, the attitude of local party and government leaders, and the satisfaction of parents. It also means room for reform and trial and error. If a school does not have an admission rate, it will definitely be marginalized and will not receive support in terms of resources.

The "Hua Luogeng Mathematics School" of Renmin University High School was renamed several times until it was cancelled, but the concept of "pit class" has since been deeply rooted in people's minds.

In 1998, Beijing replaced the exam with "computer allocation" to allocate places for "primary to junior high school" by dividing school districts and randomly drawing lots by computer. As a result, the "pit classes" launched by education and training institutions in cooperation with some schools have further expanded. Students must work hard to get good scores in the Mathematical Olympiad in order to enter the corresponding "pit classes" and then be admitted by a prestigious school in advance.

In early 2010, with the approval of the higher authorities, the experimental class of Renmin University High School had a new identity - "early training base for outstanding innovative talents", which is now the "early training class". Beijing No. 8 Middle School and Renmin University High School in Xicheng District also established an experimental class for gifted children at the same time, which later evolved into the "Eight Young Talents Class" and the "Eight Primers Class".

But in 2016, due to complaints from Beijing citizens, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission announced that any selective examinations held in the name of early childhood training classes and gifted children classes would be stopped throughout the city, and Beijing No. 8 Middle School and Renmin University High School were named. Shortly after the news came out, a teacher from the admissions office of Renmin University High School admitted to a reporter that the early childhood training class was still a program of the school.

When He Yuan's daughter was in fifth grade in 2018, she signed up for the "early training class" of Renmin University High School. The enrollment brochure stated that in addition to the qualification review, all registered students must pass the three-stage screening of initial screening, re-screening, and camp activities before they can be admitted.

What are the specific screening contents at each stage? The answer to this question has only been circulated among the people. On July 19, 2024, when the implementation of "sunshine enrollment" and "early training classes" for primary to junior high schools was suspected by the outside world to be coming to an end, Renmin University High School published the enrollment brochure, announcing that the selection standards of the previous two years would be continued, but only for Haidian District.

Less than a week later, a Southern Weekend reporter saw the content of the initial screening, re-screening and camp entry activities in a parent group of an education and training institution, which covered knowledge such as Chinese, mathematics, English, chemistry, and physics. The scope of mathematics examination included geometry, permutations and combinations, logical reasoning, etc., and the difficulty of English examination was equivalent to the Cambridge English Test (PET) level, corresponding to the English level of domestic high schools.

He Yuan's daughter failed to pass the early training screening, "but Renmin University High School will select students for admission based on their scores." Without submitting a resume, when her daughter was in sixth grade, He Yuan received a "secret message" from Renmin University High School in advance, which was a "secret phone call" informing her that she had been pre-admitted. "No student from my daughter's elementary school had ever been admitted to Renmin University High School. When she was going through the admission procedures, the teachers didn't know what to do. In the end, Renmin University High School took care of the procedures."

On June 24, 2024, the first day of the Beijing high school entrance examination, the Renmin University Affiliated High School (Renmin University Affiliated High School) examination site. The picture shows the main entrance of Renmin University Affiliated High School. (Visual China/Photo)

The value of “political security”

Picking the best students has never been the only problem faced by the education sector.

In 1987, Beijing No. 5 Middle School accepted the first "ticket student" in Beijing. The education department allowed schools to recruit more students based on their own capabilities after completing the enrollment plan, usually 5 students per class, which was called school-selected students or unplanned enrollment.

But by the mid-to-late 1990s, the proportion of students who chose to attend key schools was generally above 50%. Not only individuals but also various units paid the money, and these children were also called "co-construction students."

For the school, this money was taken for granted. At that time, 40%-60% of the education funds for primary and secondary schools had to be raised by the school itself, which was jokingly called "worrying about it yourself" by the principals.

The bigger problem is the "ticket students". In 1996, Zheng Li, then deputy director and researcher of the Beijing Municipal Government Research Office, wrote that every summer, facing the "tickets" handed in by various units, some schools even had to assign special people to deal with, discuss, and analyze the pros and cons, which was called the "ticket project"; there were also principals who hid everywhere and did not dare to go home until late at night. The principal of a key school in Haidian District once said with great headache, "I am not exaggerating at all that the tickets alone can be weighed!"

The education department was not indifferent. Starting in 1994, Beijing made a unified regulation that parents need to first hand over the donations to the district education bureau, which will then transfer them to the school where the student chooses the school. The following year, Beijing also stipulated that donations to support education are not linked to school selection.

In 2014, Beijing officially announced the cancellation of "co-construction" and proposed a "policy-guaranteed coordinated enrollment" approach to facilitate the enrollment of "children of overseas returnees introduced by the government, children of various types of introduced talents, and children of various policy-compliant guaranteed objects", which is commonly known as "political guarantee". Four years later, this regulation was deleted from the website of the Education Commission and replaced by "children of martyrs, Taiwanese students, children of overseas Chinese, children of active military personnel, children of national model workers", and children of talents introduced by the government.

In practice, "political security" eventually became a continuation of "co-construction students" and "ticket students".

In 2018, Xue Xiaole, then a member of the Central Education and Culture Committee of the Jiusan Society, discovered that in a primary school in Xicheng District, Beijing, 32 students in a class participated in computer random allocation, and 20 were admitted to key middle schools, "basically children of powerful administrative, corporate and institutional units", while students from ordinary families were mostly assigned to poorer middle schools.

After consulting several education and training agency agents as a parent of a primary school student, a Southern Weekend reporter learned a common view: this year, when students were promoted from primary school to junior high school, many schools in Haidian District only recruited students with "political security" status.

However, when a Southern Weekend reporter consulted the teacher in charge of the "early training" enrollment work at Renmin University High School as a parent, the teacher denied the above statement. According to the teacher, this year's "early training class" did not set a "political security" threshold for admission, and the policy of "selecting students" from the "early training class" registration in previous years was also cancelled this year. It is not known whether it will be restored next year.

On July 29, a Southern Weekend reporter consulted as a parent at an institution that provides both college entrance guidance and academic training. The institution revealed that due to the influence of this year's open admissions, when Haidian schools "recruited students by appointment," "half of those with 'political guarantees' were eliminated, and only the other half (with good grades) were retained."

Regarding the "political guarantee students" and this year's targeted recruitment, Southern Weekend reporters asked the Xicheng District and Haidian District Education Commissions in Beijing as parents. The Xicheng District Education Commission said that the political guarantee policy mainly exists in the stage of kindergarten to primary school, and the "political guarantee" for primary school to junior high school and the targeted recruitment of "political guarantee students" need to be consulted with relevant units. The Haidian District Education Commission said that it only knows that there is a "political guarantee" policy, but it does not know how many schools implement it specifically and whether the "targeted recruitment" will be cancelled. It is recommended that parents check the admission data of each middle school.

"One School" and "Two Schools" are a discipline

In recent years, the policy requirements for "sunshine enrollment" have appeared in documents issued by the Ministry of Education and Beijing Municipal Education Commission almost every year. It was not until the summer of 2024 that Haidian mothers ushered in the strongest "sunshine enrollment". On social platforms, a group of parents of students who were promoted from primary school to junior high school this year cried that they had prepared for the point-based enrollment for many years, but in the end it was all in vain.

For parents of ordinary children, the "first year of sunshine" still has challenges.

Five years ago, after her daughter entered the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, He Yuan's youngest son stayed in Chaoyang to study. To pick up and drop off the child, He Yuan and her husband had to get up at five o'clock every morning. After two years of this, the couple finally decided to sell their Chaoyang house and exchange it for a school district house in Haidian, and transfer their youngest son to Haidian as well.

Completely different from her sister, He Yuan discovered very early that her brother did not like studying very much and did not show any talent. Therefore, throughout the primary school period, He Yuan only enrolled her son in English classes, and never "coached" him for Mathematical Olympiads, nor did she consider "special training".

Before this summer, He Yuan thought that according to the policy, as long as her son could be admitted to an ordinary school within the school district that was not a "scam school", she would be satisfied.

On April 29, 2024, Haidian District issued the "Implementation Opinions on the 2024 Compulsory Education Stage Enrollment". According to this document, except for students in nine-year schools who can directly go to corresponding junior high schools, the rest of the students need to fill in their wishes through parents and be admitted by random lottery.

The random lottery is conducted in two batches, referred to as "first batch" and "second batch". According to the "Junior High School Admission Questions and Answers" released on the same day as the "Implementation Opinions", the online application time for "first batch" is May 27. Parents can fill in all 10 choices, or fill in none and wait for "second batch". After the admission results of "first batch" are released, the allocation of the second batch will start on June 25, which is "second batch".

On social platforms, parents generally believe that the enrollment scope of "school one" is wider, and they can apply to any school in the entire Haidian District. However, when it comes to the "school two" stage, they can only choose schools within the corresponding school district, and are forced to fill in all their choices. If there are many "pitfall schools" in the school district, they should give priority to "school one".

The same is true for He Yuan. Before the transition from primary school to junior high school, she attended a parent meeting for volunteering organized by her son's primary school. She thought she had fully mastered the tricks of the operation at that time. In the "first group" stage, He Yuan filled in 10 applications and selected the middle school opposite her son's primary school as the first choice. "At that time, they said that one-third of the quota in their primary school was for students to go there, and many of my son's classmates went there, and he wanted to continue to go to the same school with everyone." According to public reputation, the middle school that He Yuan originally intended to go to is an upper-middle school in Haidian District.

Less than 10 days later, the results of the first group came out, and He Yuan's son fell into the "pit" and was admitted to the school of his sixth choice. Some of his junior high school classmates were admitted with their tenth choice.

"A school that only accepts a hundred or so students has accepted its tenth choice, which means no one applied for it. But I still put it sixth." He Yuan does not plan to go for a "top school". She only hopes that her son can be admitted to the schools of his first five choices when he is in the "first group", and not go to the "second group" stage.

The aforementioned "Junior High School Admission Questions and Answers" mentioned that in the "first batch" stage, when the number of applicants exceeds the school's enrollment plan, the computer will randomly admit students who have filled in the school as their first choice according to the order of their preferences until the quota is full. Students who are not admitted by their first choice will be transferred to the second choice for random admission until the quota is full. Students who are admitted by the school in the "first batch" cannot participate in the "second batch" even if they are not satisfied with the result.

He Yuan originally thought that schools that were full in the "first round" would no longer participate in the "second round", but she later discovered that many of her son's classmates went to their favorite schools through the "second round".

Just like filling out college entrance examination applications, obtaining information and interpreting policies when it comes to the issue of primary school to junior high school is also a science.

As early as 2013, Fang Guangwei, then deputy director of the Education Office of the National People's Congress Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee, said that information disclosure troubled many families when it came to school selection. "Many people don't say their children must go to key schools. If the thresholds were clear, and it was clear why some people could get in and some couldn't, parents wouldn't have such big complaints. But now, no one knows how to get in, and parents don't know which way to go."

He Yuan fell into self-blame. On the night when the results were announced, she repeatedly wondered whether her son was admitted to a "bad school" because of bad luck, or because she had not studied the policy clearly, or because the education on volunteer application was insufficient.

The next day, He Yuan posted her experience on social media. In the private messages she received, many parents comforted her, saying that this year was a "sunshine allocation" and the school's student source would change greatly, which made He Yuan gradually accept the fact. "I think if my son can go, there will definitely be other better children going, and the school's student source will not be as bad as before."

On July 5, 2017, the computer allocation for primary school students in Dongcheng District, Beijing was carried out. This year was the first time that the city-level allocation system was used uniformly. (Photo by Visual China)

College entrance consultation has become a business

After the admission results were finalized, He Yuan learned from other parents about the ins and outs of filling out the application form. They told her not to apply for a school she didn't want to go to. In order to get into a "top school" like Renmin University High School, many people would even fill out only one application form.

What He Yuan didn’t know was that the opacity and asymmetry of information and the anxiety of parents have long turned college entrance consultation into a business.

Through a simple search using the keyword "Beijing primary to junior high school", Southern Weekend reporters found more than a dozen teachers who specialize in college planning on major social platforms. They provide one-on-one primary to junior high school counseling, with hourly fees ranging from several hundred yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.

The charging standard is related to the form of consultation, the teacher's popularity and the length of time in the industry. The 699 yuan consultation can only be completed online; after the "double reduction", teachers who have transformed from the education and training industry have an hourly consultation fee of up to 5,680 yuan.

Taking the one with the highest fee as an example, the customer service staff introduced that this teacher used to be the principal of a campus of a well-known education and training institution in Beijing, and started to do academic planning the year before last. If you want to make an appointment for his 1-on-1 consultation, parents need to first purchase a basic membership for 2,999 yuan, and then pay 32,001 yuan to upgrade to the highest level membership. After the upgrade, the teacher will provide the family with an interview plan of about 3 hours, allowing parents to make unlimited appointments for 1-on-1 private chats, share academic, teacher and friend resources, and organize offline special Q&A meetings until the end of the child's college entrance examination. However, due to the popularity of appointments, the teacher's offline meeting time can only be scheduled after the end of October.

On the evening of July 26, a Southern Weekend reporter attended two "admission guidance classes" in succession as a parent.

In one of the classes, the lecturer introduced the methods of selecting the best students in Xicheng, Haidian and Chaoyang districts one by one.

In addition to the official random allocation, Xicheng and Haidian both have three other methods: submitting resumes, "political security" and receiving "secret telegrams". Even in Fengtai District, where the education level is not optimistic, parents submitting resumes or schools organizing tests on students in the fifth and sixth grades have become the norm.

At the same time, another institution that provides college entrance planning claims that although it has only been transformed from subject education for more than a year, it has served nearly 2,000 students and has become one of the top three in Beijing. According to the consultant of the institution, after purchasing the service, they will arrange teachers to make comprehensive plans for children's subjects, college entrance paths, interests and specialties throughout the entire period from elementary school to junior high school, and recommend suitable training institutions for parents.

When asked about the impact of sunshine admissions on point-to-point admissions this year, the consulting teacher said with certainty that it has not been cancelled 100%, but the probability is low.

"The future transition from primary school to junior high school is actually a comprehensive battle between information and grades, and grades should be considered first." This is what the teacher said in the aforementioned "College Entrance Guidance Class".

Mathematical Olympiad is still the hard currency when it comes to "recruiting students by appointment".

A teacher from an institution revealed to a Southern Weekend reporter who came to consult that some Mathematical Olympiad competitions have been moved to other places this year. "There was a cup competition in Anyang, Henan, but it didn't get off the ground. Another cup competition was held in Jeju Island (South Korea), which was equivalent to going there to play for a while and taking a study test at the same time."

However, Southern Weekend reporters also noticed that some of the statements made by the teachers in the institutions were not supported by official sources, and their authenticity and reliability could not be verified. For many institutions, selling courses is the ultimate goal. From Mathematical Olympiads to composition, English, and even early training classes for exam preparation, tutoring and training are still in full swing.

School selection is endless

In 2014, when Beijing completely abolished the "co-construction students", the media described it as the "strictest school selection ban in history". Now, ten years later, Beijing has ushered in the "first year of sunshine", and whether the internal root causes of the school selection problem have been eliminated has become the focus of attention.

For decades, education experts and decision-makers have consistently held the view that the contradiction between supply and demand in Beijing is too great, and that the differences between schools are the root cause.

Take primary schools as an example. In a paper published in 2023, Wang Yanhui, a professor at Capital Normal University, and others found that although Beijing's Haidian District concentrates the city's best educational resources, based on factors such as teacher allocation and teaching quality, there are only 12 first-class primary schools that are generally recognized by citizens, and only about 46% of children of school age have the opportunity to enter them.

In 2019, at Renmin University High School, where He Yuan's eldest daughter studied, the teachers were almost all provincial champions in various subject competitions, who had studied abroad or graduated from Peking University or Tsinghua University. At Beijing Experimental School, where her youngest son studied, masters who graduated from Capital Normal University were considered the better teachers.

The education authorities have also tried to bridge the gap between schools. In 2015, Beijing issued a policy to encourage districts and counties and schools to promote a series of pilot projects, including setting up branches of famous schools, education grouping, and education alliances. Four years later, about 160 education groups have been established in the basic education stage alone.

Renmin University High School began exploring group-based schooling as early as 2002. Over the past two decades, the Renmin University High School Education Group has included more than 20 schools in Beijing alone.

"On the surface, group schools are meant to resolve conflicts, but in reality, we are now managing weak schools to hang up signs." An insider in the education system found that the Geological Primary School where his son had attended more than a decade ago has now been renamed the Third Experimental Primary School of Haidian District. "There are famous schools and school district housing everywhere, and they all want to hang up the signs of excellent schools," which also makes it easier for group schools to select students internally.

However, the differences between schools will still be difficult to make up in the short term.

The "Beijing Education Development Research Report (2023)" mentioned that the Education Development Research Center of the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences conducted an education satisfaction survey, and the results showed that in 2022, whether it was parents of students, NPC deputies and CPPCC members, inspectors, or principals and teachers, they were most dissatisfied with the "gap in the operating levels between compulsory education schools."

When answering reporters' questions in 2012, Su Shangfeng, associate professor at the Institute of Basic Education Development of Capital Normal University, said that school choice is a social phenomenon that is bound to emerge with social development. The increasingly serious conflicts in school choice are a reflection of the fact that society is moving towards a healthy development and more people are able to choose better schools.

Chen Zhiwen, academic committee member of the China Education Development Strategy Society and editor-in-chief of China Education Online, believes that "there are cognitive blind spots in the fever of school selection, especially the anxious marketing of training institutions." However, it is undeniable that attaching importance to education is deeply rooted in the cultural DNA of the Chinese people. Whether they are Chinese or overseas Chinese, they all rack their brains to choose better schools for their children.

Starting from 2021, while prohibiting the selection of top students, Beijing has been exploring a model of cultivating top innovative talents that organically connects primary, secondary and tertiary education in multiple districts. Chen Zhiwen told the Southern Weekend reporter that on the basis of doing a good job in the education of concept cognition and guaranteeing the right of all people to receive education nearby, it is advisable to combine the current needs of selecting and cultivating top talents, open a fair channel for talented teenagers, including comprehensive evaluation such as interviews and examinations, and institutionalize the practices of No. 8 Middle School and Renmin University High School for all schools.

"School selection is a reality and it is an endless process. How to solve it? To block or to ease?" Chen Zhiwen believes that many theoretically imperfect practices often have practical significance.

In July, He Yuan attended a parents' meeting at the junior high school where her son was about to enter. At the meeting, the teachers mentioned that 2024 was the year with the most students in the school's history. For this reason, the school specially arranged a key teacher who had just taught the third grade graduating class to show its attention to the students.

On the big screen, He Yuan saw that many of the students who took the college entrance examination this year were admitted to the university where she was studying and working. At that moment, He Yuan felt a lot of good feelings towards this school.

(At the request of the interviewee, He Yuan is a pseudonym in this article. Southern Weekend interns Gu Jingnan and Chen Hao also contributed to this article)

Southern Weekend reporter Jiang Minyu

Editor: Qian Wei