Study Questions On Chinese Students Essay

For Chinese students in academic senior secondary education, when applying for University, students undertake the Gaokao examination that includes: ‘Chinese, mathematics, foreign language and either humanities (politics, history and geography) or the science suite’ (Ofqual 2012: 224). In comparison to England, Chinese students have little autonomy in selecting subjects. Ofqual (2012: 224) highlights how the compulsory attainment of mathematics requires ‘knowledge comprehension and mastery’. In contrast, England’s A-level system juxtaposes China’s tight prescription of subjects as Ofqual (2012: 80) reported ‘There is no compulsory subject element – A-levels can be taken in any combination desired to reflect the interests of the student’. However, China’s emphasis upon mathematics questions whether England and China’s PISA results can be compared when Ofqual (2012: 131) discovered that the ‘demand of the [Chinese mathematics] paper was judged to be higher than A-level mathematics’. This suggests that the PISA results are unreliable as National College for School leadership (2013: 23) found that the ‘mathematics curriculum in China is narrower than that in England’ therefore showing Chinese students’ high performance is due to working on a limited range. Arguably, this contributes to China’s absence of creativity as this narrow focus suggests that there is little room for independent thought. Although PISA reveals Chinese students are mathematically advanced, this does not…