Editor's note: Wang Yan is a senior specialist at the National Institute of Education Sciences. This article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In 1977, China restored its College Entrance Examination (CEE) system, a standardized examination to screen and select the best talents into higher education for further study based on the principle of equity.

Looking back, restoring the CEE was a significant step and a defining moment for millions of people's lives that changed their social mobility.

In practice, candidates take the college entrance exam in one of two categories: humanities or sciences and engineering. Based on their exam performances, they are assigned to an institution and program that they have applied for in order of preferences.

Cutoff scores are lower for candidates from disadvantaged groups, such as ethnic minorities, as well as for athletes and recipients of national and international awards.

The CEE ensures the selection of potentially the most talented people into universities who may later become teachers, doctors, civil servants, engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, so on and so forth, that play a critical role in driving economic and social development.

Compared to the university admission systems in many other countries, the CEE is more balanced in that it looks at the students' scores rather than the influence of non-merit factors.

Thus, it has achieved a high degree of fairness in the allocation of educational opportunities, provide transparency for the social and economic merit of qualifications, and contribute to the high-value individuals and institutions attach to education.

Right now the CEE is an essential step to improve social mobility and social equality. Regardless of their social and economic status/background, the students have an equal opportunity to compete in the college entrance examination.

On the other hand, once the college entrance examination was reinstituted, the parents' and students' desire to attend the best universities became more intense. 

As a corrective measure, quality education, defined as a kind of training focusing on nurturing competencies rather than on imparting knowledge per se, was instituted as a national policy in 1993 which emphasized a shift from “examination-oriented education” toward “quality-oriented education.”

The learning objective shifted from general knowledge and basic skills toward a broad range of “knowledge and ability, process and method, and emotion, attitude and values” during the ground-breaking Basic Education Curriculum Reform at the turn of the century. This led to the most recent creation of core competencies framework including self-development, social participation and cultural literacy that is supposed to guide the teaching and learning nationwide.

In spite of the changing goals and objectives, the overwhelming emphasis on the scores of examinations and the heavy workload of test preparation persist as college entrance examination still mainly test knowledge acquired by students through written examinations over two to three days.

In the pursuit of “quality-oriented education,” various schemes of college entrance examination and university admission have been piloted. On top of written tests on traditional core subjects of Chinese (Mandarin), Mathematics and Foreign Language, the new schemes allow students to make choices on a certain number of subjects based on students' preferences, among other things.

In bold experimentation of forerunners of education reform in China such as Beijing, the new admission scheme also involves students' results from learning performance test, comprehensive quality evaluation as well as interviews. Yet, it has been followed by many competing voices.  In particular, there have been growing concerns that subjective factors in the assessment might affect equity.

Worldwide, the factors that are most commonly considered in the admission process can be grouped into four main categories: examinations, secondary school preparation, application materials and demographic factors.

Achievement-oriented entrance examinations generally measure the knowledge candidates acquired in subjects studied in high school and may be considered alone or in combination with other factors in the admission process.

It is believed that introducing non-exam factors into the admission process, for example, a candidate's high school grades, application essays and interviews, provides a picture of his or her abilities and qualifications over multiple years. This process may allow institutions to better assess the candidate's “fitness” with the institution, its programmatic strengths, and its overall mission.

Arguably, the students who “fit” best with the institution are more likely to succeed academically, thrive socially and personally, and ultimately graduate and contribute to society and the labor market.

Nonetheless, it is known that when the integrity of processes and accuracy of results are not compromised to ensure fairness, in spite of the challenges, it might be an inevitable trend to pursue.

Examinations will be reformed to offer a high degree of validity regarding measuring what students have learned around core competencies through complex and authentic assessment tasks.

Meanwhile, reform will continue with the meticulous design of formative assessments, students portfolio as well as institutionally administered admission test that could help each student, with varied talent, find a suitable place in higher education institutions.

Hopefully, this will also encourage competency-based learning in schools when the student could enjoy a happy and productive education that will prepare them for further changes in China and the world.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)