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wen he zhikui school of social sciences, wuhan university

among the various discussions about the decline of counties, it is difficult to find that qingbei and undergraduate-oriented students are important manifestations of the decline of counties, which means that the quality of county education continues to decline. the most direct reason for this is that the county's educational ecology has been destroyed due to the continuous loss of students and teachers. this process has occurred with the development and expansion of super middle schools. according to the survey, super middle schools use various means to "pinch" away high-quality students in the county, destroying the student source structure in the county, resulting in the subsequent continuous loss of students and teachers. this is the use of their own advantages by super middle schools this is the main way to continuously compress the development space in the county.

in addition, the development of the second track of subject competition is another important way for super middle schools to maintain their own advantages and carry out dimensionality reduction in the county.

1. from bare points to competition support: changes in the domestic cultural student track 

in the past, the main way for students to enter major universities was to rank them based on their college entrance examination scores and then select the best. however, in the current process of college entrance examination for cultural students, major famous universities have tilted their admissions indicators toward competition and strong foundation plans, which has opened up a second track for the competition in the college entrance examination. the proportion of students who get into good universities with bare scores in the college entrance examination is increasingly decreasing. as for the school's slogan: "the strong foundation plan seizes policy dividends, and the competition for naked scores in the college entrance examination is intensifying." judging from the admission situation in qingbei, statistics from interviews show that the number of students admitted to qingbei in guangxi each year is about 150 there are only about 50 students admitted with bare scores in the college entrance examination, and according to the analysis of front-line teachers, the proportion of those in competitive provinces such as zhejiang and qingbei with bare scores is even less than 30%. among them, having competition experience is the key to gaining an advantage in the competition on this second track, which shows that today's college entrance examination competition is no longer just a competition of college entrance examination scores.

as for the second track, it is composed of the olympiad and the strong foundation plan, and thus forms four routes for further studies: first, in terms of olympiad competition, through competitions in five major disciplines (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and information) achieve excellent results and enter the national training team, thereby qualifying for admission to qingbei. however, this condition is often more stringent. there are often only 260 places in the national training team, which is a national competition. the second is to win gold and silver medals in the competition, thereby qualifying to participate in independent enrollment at prestigious universities such as tsinghua university and peking university. currently, there are four main programs: tsinghua university’s leadership program and climbing program, and peking university’s talent program and excellence program. after passing this kind of independent admissions interview, you can get qingbei recognition. as long as you pass the special control line in the college entrance examination, you can be admitted to tsinghua and peking university. however, if they do not pass the independent admissions interview, gold and silver medal winners can still gain advantages in the third way - the strong foundation plan. the strong foundation plan is an additional admissions process conducted by major universities after the college entrance examination. the process is divided into two stages: first, the shortlisted students are determined based on the college entrance examination results. if the registered candidates obtain gold or silver medals, they can be directly shortlisted. no need participate in the subsequent school test (that is, the school test will be regarded as a direct perfect score). the second is to organize school tests in major colleges and universities in mid-to-late june, and 15% of the final test scores will be included in the overall evaluation score (the college entrance examination scores account for 85%), and then the best will be admitted based on the overall score ranking. in the strong foundation plan, in addition to the advantage of being exempted from exams for gold and silver medals in the competition, students who participate in the competition and win bronze medals, provincial first prizes, or even no awards can also gain advantages. the reason is that the strong foundation test in colleges and universities is usually very close to or it is equivalent to the competition level, so students who have studied through systematic subject competitions will have an advantage over students who have not participated in competition training at all. the final way is the college entrance examination. you can participate in the volunteer application work with bare points, and be admitted based on your college entrance examination scores. however, in terms of the difficulty of the current college entrance examination questions, students who have participated in subject competitions also have knowledge reserves and solutions to difficult problems. advantages in question format. therefore, the current education channels can be summarized as: two entrances, multiple paths, and four tracks. however, among the four tracks, three tracks are directly related to subject competitions, and the college entrance examination can also benefit from the competition. this shows the importance of subject competitions in the current college entrance examination competition. as a result, both super middle schools and city-level high schools have promoted it as an important task, and have even established departments such as the "innovative talent training center" to promote the development of school competitions in a more professional way.

2. advanced learning and resource investment: the underlying logic of the competition 

the reason why subject competitions cause a dimensionality reduction blow to the county is not only that the second track monopolizes a large number of qingbei and zhongben quotas, but more importantly, the high-energy-consuming operations cultivated by the competition are unable to be supported by the county. looking at the entire competition operation system, we can find that advance learning and resource investment are the keys to competition operation.

first of all, advanced learning refers to the training method of competition. since the competition is positioned to select top talents in the subject, most of the knowledge points in the questions come from relevant university majors. however, for students, the basic education stage will not directly come into contact with the subject knowledge of the higher education stage. therefore, if they want to enter the competition track, it is imperative to study in advance beyond the current stage of schooling. however, from the perspective of the knowledge system itself, the learning of subject knowledge in higher education is not formed out of thin air. it is also based on the premise that students have learned the knowledge in the basic education stage before they can understand and master it. therefore, for the training of competitions, advanced learning has two meanings: one is the advance learning of higher education knowledge, and the other is the rapid learning of knowledge in the basic education stage. first of all, the knowledge tested in the competition is in most cases beyond the scope of the college entrance examination syllabus, involving knowledge points in higher education, and has requirements for the depth and breadth of knowledge. therefore, students must be familiar with higher education during the training period. learn, master and skillfully apply the knowledge in advance. during the survey, a classmate who had participated in the chemistry competition mentioned that the knowledge he learned in the high school competition could have been used throughout his junior year. secondly, the rapid learning of knowledge in the basic education stage means that students need to go beyond the general curriculum planning in the school period. since the knowledge tested by the competition itself is not within the scope of high school curriculum, students need to have time dedicated to learning competition knowledge and exam training, and this time can be achieved through rapid learning of basic education knowledge, that is, in high school each stage uses a relatively short period of time to learn all the knowledge in the entire stage, and then invests in training for the competition. in the words of the teacher: "students can teach after mastering about 50% of the knowledge, because the subsequent knowledge can be covering previous issues". in addition to "grabbing time" in high school, qualified schools can also cover early learning to junior high school through the school period, so as to gain more time. for example, a certain municipal middle school investigated in the survey not only starts classes in advance at the junior high school level through the through-training of the junior high school, but also conducts appropriate competition training courses during this period to lay the foundation for competition training at the high school level.

secondly, since students do not completely give up regular teaching courses during the competition training process, students participating in the competition are often engaged in a two-pronged battle. on the one hand, they learn high school course knowledge, and on the other hand, they conduct advanced learning for competition training. . to achieve this, we need the joint resource support of schools and families. first, schools need to have teachers, that is, teachers who have the ability to master competition knowledge and serve as subject coaches to guide students' learning. different from students' mastery of knowledge, teachers also need to systematically grasp the entire knowledge structure and be able to clearly answer students' doubts. this is more demanding for teachers, and because competition knowledge is quite different from regular teaching, teachers also need to it requires specialized study and therefore demands the teacher's energy. second, schools and families must have financial strength. since the competition involves higher education knowledge, teaching many contents is often beyond the ability of teachers in the school. at this time, it is necessary to use market forces to "bring in" or "send out." this process often requires high financial capabilities of schools and families to train students. take the author's research in guangxi as an example: "bringing in" refers to hiring well-known university professors or current doctoral students (who have won gold medals or international awards) to provide lectures and targeted training for students. this method is mainly aimed at subjects with a large number of students such as mathematics and physics. generally, a lecture lasts one day and one night: eight hours, six hours of class and two hours of answering questions. it costs a total of 20,000 yuan. this fee is generally paid by the school and families share the responsibility; "sending out" means sending students to training institutions in competitive provinces such as zhejiang and hunan for training, or to participate in summer camps held in qingbei, etc. generally, sending students out lasts about 7 days and costs 7,000-8,000. yuan, the cost is borne by the family. therefore, in guangxi, schools often spend about 2 to 3 million yuan on competitions every year. according to the teacher's calculations, it would cost the school and family a total investment of about 100,000 to train a local competition student. the teacher also said that in developed areas, this cost would only be higher, and the investment in the entire training process in jiangsu and zhejiang areas is even it reached nearly 1 million. it can be seen from this that the operation of the entire competition system is premised on the investment of a large amount of resources.

to sum up, from the perspective of the competition track, if you want to achieve results, you need to meet two conditions: first, you need to have high-quality students. rapid and advanced learning itself does not conform to the cognitive law of gradual individual cognition. therefore, students who can accept this set of training methods must have strong comprehension ability, acceptance ability and self-learning ability. this includes both talent and self-learning ability. the result of long-term family training. it can be said that the competition track is tailor-made for outstanding students, and the purpose is to select this group of students. therefore, high-quality students are the prerequisite for the development of the competition system. this is also one of the motivations for the "pinch" between super middle schools and municipal key high schools. second, schools and families need to have strong financial investment capabilities. the operation of the entire competition training system consumes a lot of resources, such as coaches’ salaries, bonuses, and market training expenses. however, for the county, the current loss of students and the disadvantaged position of resources prevent it from participating in the competition, and thus it is excluded from the second track, making qualified super middle schools and city key middle schools in the college entrance examination. the competition has caused a dimensionality reduction blow to the county.

3. from talent selection to resources being king: the “distortion” of competition and its impact 

returning to the competition system, as the second track, the original intention of its design is to better screen out students with academic talents, cancel independent enrollment, and raise the threshold for direct admission in qingbei (only those selected for the national training team can be delivered directly). however, in the current competition, there is not only the path of competition recommendation, but the four further education paths can be closely related to the competition, giving participants a lot of room to choose strategies. under this circumstance, the expectations of schools and families for the competition are not just to win prizes and be recommended through the competition, but to regard the competition as a process of improvement and guarantee, because even if they cannot enter the national training team, the gold and silver medals still have a strong foundation and self-confidence. even if you have no chance to recruit, participating in the competition can still gain certain advantages in strengthening the foundation and the college entrance examination. therefore, for schools and families, the cost of participation is only in terms of financial and other resources. as long as you have the ability to participate, you will definitely be able to pass the college entrance examination. earn profits from competition. therefore, whether it is the requirements for student qualifications or the requirements for school training capabilities, it ultimately comes back to the resource requirements for participants.

however, the advantages of competition are only available to individuals who can afford to pay for competitive training, and in the case of qingbei in a province and the number of key undergraduate places is relatively stable, the competition track has formed a squeeze on the bare-point college entrance examination track. for the county, on the one hand, it is isolated from the competition track, and on the other hand, the path to the bare-score college entrance examination track has become narrower, making competition more intense. in order to ensure performance, counties that are disadvantaged in terms of resources and students can only strive for a glimmer of hope for themselves through self-pressure, such as extending study time, but they often fall into a vicious cycle of involution. as a result, competition has become an important factor in dividing and increasing educational involution.

therefore, the setting up of the competition system still needs to return to its single function of selection, which requires controlling its radiation range rather than shaping it into an investment with comprehensive benefits and a sure profit.