What variables will the "materialization double selection" bring to the 2024 college entrance examination?
There are less than two months left before this year's college entrance examination, and candidates have entered the final sprint period, and parents are also busy. For example, in Beijing, after mid-April, there will be a number of large-scale admissions consultation meetings almost every weekend, some in colleges and universities, some in auditoriums and halls outside the school, the scene is crowded, and there are always more parents than candidates.
The 2024 college entrance examination, the tenth year of the launch of the new college entrance examination, has covered more than 20 provinces. But there are still new changes this year, and one of the most anxious problems for parents is how to fill in the volunteer after the implementation of the "materialization double selection" policy. Three years ago, the Ministry of Education issued the "Guidelines for the Requirements for the Selection of Subjects for Undergraduate Admissions in Colleges and Universities (General Version)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Course Selection Guidelines"), requiring that most science and engineering majors will require "physics + chemistry" to be required to be selected at the time of admission, so it is called "physical and chemical double selection". This year's college entrance examination, this policy will be officially implemented.
The policy was announced three years ago, giving candidates, parents and schools plenty of time to respond. Many of the students and teachers we interviewed reported that after the "Course Selection Guidelines" was issued, the school would continue to blow the wind and explain the policy during the first year of high school. In the end, most candidates will fall into the traditional combination of "Physics + Chemistry + Biology".
Stills from "Life of Pi".
However, in reality, schools at different levels, as well as families from different regions and different classes, have different information, resources and abilities when making decisions, and some people always fall outside the norm. Brother Xun, who was born as a middle school teacher and has volunteered to fill in the college entrance examination for more than ten years, has many parents and fans on the Internet, and he did a sample survey on the Internet this year, asking many school candidates or parents, and found that 20% of them chose physics, but not chemistry. Therefore, he judged that if there are big variables in this year's college entrance examination, it is likely to be due to the matter of "materialization double selection".
After the "double choice of physics and chemistry", the admission requirements of university majors have been readjusted, and candidates who have selected "physics + chemistry" have the largest application range, especially for science, engineering, agriculture and medicine, while candidates who only choose physics and do not choose chemistry will close the door to many majors. In previous years, the reference line of the major admission line has declined, and candidates must recalibrate their positions when filling in the application, otherwise there may be deviations.
"Let's take L Province, which has implemented the reform of the college entrance examination, as an example, they recruit students according to the professional group, assuming that there are 100,000 undergraduate plans in the physics group, in previous years, as long as you choose physics, you can basically apply. Of the 100,000 plans, 50% are liberal arts majors that are not limited to the selection of subjects, and about 50% are majors that can only be applied for by science and engineering. Generally speaking, the admissions plan is not a big change because it involves too many aspects. Brother Xun told us, "Now according to the new "Course Selection Guidelines", if you only choose physics and not chemistry, most science and engineering majors will not be able to apply. In the end, it is equivalent to about 20% of candidates who only choose physics but not chemistry, and can only apply for the 50% of majors that are not limited to the number of subjects. Think about it, can these people fill in the admission data of previous years? And the remaining 80 percent of the candidates who chose physics plus chemistry are about to wake up laughing from their dreams? Because they have 20 percent less competition. Just wait and see, there will definitely be big news. ”
Every morning, the senior high school students of Changxing Jinling Senior High School in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, read aloud with textbooks in the corridor (photo by Huang Yu)
Why can I fill in up to 112 volunteers in the new college entrance examination?
Since the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, filling in the application has indeed been a very tangled thing for a long time, including a certain element of luck. Whether it is the pre-test and post-test evaluation mode, or the ladder volunteer mode after the scores, there are always some candidates who cannot go to their favorite universities or majors because of filling in the errors.
In order to solve this problem, the new college entrance examination has implemented a full parallel volunteer model. If a "major + college" is counted as a volunteer, the undergraduate batch in Liaoning Province can fill in a maximum of 112 volunteers, which is the province with the most volunteers, Shandong candidates can apply for up to 96, Zhejiang Province can apply for more than 80, and other provinces that have implemented the new college entrance examination, excluding Shanghai, can fill in the minimum number of volunteers is 45.
Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of "China Education Online", further explained: "The voluntary filling mode of the old college entrance examination is more mainstream is that you can fill in 6 schools, and each school can fill in 5 majors, which is essentially to apply for schools. The rules of the new college entrance examination are more complicated, and two models are basically adopted. The first is to take the major as the core, collectively referred to as the professional category. Generally, there are more volunteers to fill in, such as 80 (Zhejiang), 96 (Shandong), etc., which means that a university will have multiple admission score lines in a province, and the gap is huge. In principle, there is no adjustment for this kind of voluntary filling mode; the second is the professional group model, which is closer to the old college entrance examination, and the school matches some similar majors or majors with similar knowledge bases required for training, such as requiring compulsory physics or compulsory chemistry, which can be adjusted in a group. ”
On May 22, 2023, in Huainan City, Anhui Province, senior high school students of Fengtai No. 1 Middle School carefully review in the evening self-study class and sprint for the college entrance examination (Photo by Chen Bin/Photo courtesy of Visual China)
The rise of the college entrance examination voluntary filling industry, represented by Zhang Xuefeng, is happening in this increasingly complex rule environment. Faced with a greatly expanded number of choices, parents have information anxiety, which becomes an opportunity to volunteer to fill in the business. At the same time, the deal has further amplified this anxiety. Zhang Xuefeng's famous quotations "If you are killed, you can't report the news" and "Liberal arts are all service industries" made him controversial and successful. In Zhang Xuefeng's company's live broadcast room, consulting services of about 10,000 yuan are often empty in seconds, and many parents wait in advance and can't grab them if they want to. Some university teachers believe that Zhang Xuefeng has even had an impact on the admission line of some majors. And all this also goes against the original intention of the reform of the voluntary reporting model.
The core principle of the parallel voluntary submission of the new college entrance examination is "score first, follow the volunteer": the candidates will be sorted according to the score, and the candidates in front will be in the file first, and they will be retrieved one by one according to the order of the volunteers they fill in until they are admitted, and then the candidates who are ranked lower will be rejected. The main purpose of this is to improve the satisfaction rate of candidates, in other words, to give everyone more certainty and security when filling in the volunteers.
Chenwu, the first generation of volunteer filling experts who became popular in the parent group, pointed out that the current volunteer filling mode seems complicated in form, but it is actually much easier than before. "If you compare filling in the volunteer to hitting a target, the 10 rings are the bull's-eye, and in the past, if you didn't hit the 10 rings, the end up might be off target, so you have to hit accurately. Now if you miss 10 rings, 9 rings, 8 rings, and 7 rings, the probability of missing the target is already very small. "If parents can grasp this essence first, and then learn more about their children's learning interests and personality strengths, choosing a suitable school and major may not be as difficult as imagined.
Stills from "Life of Pi".
How does expanding choice spark a more intense game?
Why do we need to engage in "materialization double selection"? Why do we need to fill in more than 100 volunteers? For those who have not experienced the new college entrance examination, it is quite difficult to understand these questions.
For example, "materialization double selection" does not seem to be much different from the past model of arts and sciences. But ten years ago, in 2014, when Shanghai and Zhejiang launched the first batch of pilot reforms of the new college entrance examination, the first thing to change was the division of arts and sciences, which was replaced by a free choice of subjects. In addition to the three compulsory exams of "language and mathematics", candidates are allowed to choose any three subjects as college entrance examination subjects in "physical, chemical, biological, biological, and geographical", and Zhejiang has even added a new technology, "7 to choose 3", making the subject selection combination as high as 35.
The logic of this change is easy to understand, after all, the previous situation was "a long time ago". It is true that the compulsory division of subjects in senior high school is not conducive to the all-round development of people, nor is it in line with the proper meaning of education. The reform gives candidates the right to choose subjects freely, and the premise is that all subjects must participate in the academic proficiency test, and only after passing can they get the scores of the selected subjects. In other words, all 6 subjects must be studied, and only 3 subjects are selected. But later it turned out that the system designers were too idealistic, and under the pressure of strong college entrance examination scores, the free choice of subjects became a successful choice of subjects, and those who did not choose did not study, which greatly increased the game space.
After breaking the liberal arts, science and liberal arts, it is necessary to make the college entrance examination scores of candidates with different combinations of subjects fairly comparable, and the selected subjects are subject to a grading system, which is included in different grades according to the candidates' ranks. For example, the plan of Zhejiang Province is divided into 21 levels, three points and one section, with a starting score of 40 points and a total score of 100 points.
On June 7, 2023, teachers and students from the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of Chinese greet students taking the first day of the college entrance examination on the roadside
"There is a situation in the point system, maybe you and other people's original score may be half a point, but because this half point is squeezed into too many people, there is a difference of one grade, and finally after the assignment of points, it is three points short. Cheng Changchang, who has been teaching in a county in southwest Zhejiang for more than 10 years and has personally experienced the whole process of reform, told us, "The point system has brought about an obvious change in everyone's psychology: it is not comparing with oneself, it is not like we used to encourage students to say, as long as you make progress this time than the last time, it is reflected in fighting with others, how you are is the same thing, and how you compare with others, that is more important." ”
In response to the problem of "one test for life" in the old college entrance examination, the original reform plan also allowed foreign languages and optional subjects to be "one subject and multiple tests", such as biology, geography and other subjects, which can be taken once in the second year of high school and once in the third year of high school, and the highest score will be included in the college entrance examination score. Bright parents and schools quickly saw the opportunity. In Cheng's county, for example, their school, which was the best middle school in the county at that time, was still relatively cautious about reform and adopted a natural attitude. But after the results of the first selection examination were announced, there were several things that shocked Cheng Changchang and these teachers. One is that a local township middle school that was not outstanding sent a large number of students to take the exam, and some students actually got full marks in biology and geography after being assigned. The other is that some schools have achieved a lot of high marks in the new subject of technology.
Teachers call this phenomenon "front-running". Because it is the first year of selection, many schools have no experience and are afraid to encourage students to actively take the exam and go all out. Because this will lead to a lot of academic pressure in the first year of high school, the teaching rhythm will have to be readjusted, and if you do well or not, there is no countermeasure in terms of mentality. As for the new technology, it is even more unclear what and how to test. But there are always "barefoot people who are not afraid to wear shoes", betting on the psychology of others, so as to get a higher score.
After suffering a "loss" in the first two years, the parents of the candidates and the school began to study countermeasures. As a result, in those two years, there was a large-scale phenomenon of "abandoning physics" in Shanghai and Zhejiang, while geography and biology teachers were in short supply. According to relevant statistics, in 2017, the number of candidates for physics in Shanghai accounted for about 38% of the total candidates, ranking second to last, and dropped to the bottom in 2018, accounting for 30%. The situation is similar in Zhejiang: before the reform of the college entrance examination, the number of students who took physics in 2016 accounted for about 60% of the total candidates, ranking first, falling to 27.5% in 2017 and 24% in 2018, ranking first.
"It's very simple, everyone doesn't want to be someone else's denominator. Qin Guoqiang, director of the Education Bureau of Changxing County, Huzhou, Zhejiang Province and former principal of Changxing Middle School, recalled the difficult process of subject selection at that time. He said that if physics is difficult, the people who choose will be strong, resulting in fewer people being selected, and the score will be lower under the grading system, which in turn will lead to fewer people being selected. Zhejiang was originally a traditional science province, with science masters like clouds, but the competition in liberal arts was relatively less fierce. After the advent of reform, the situation reversed.
Changxing Jinling Senior High School is brightly lit at night, and senior high school students read at night (Photo courtesy of Visual China)
In high school, the physics teacher, who was originally very high-spirited, was idle for a few years, and the liberal arts teacher was unprecedentedly popular. Many high schools go to some normal colleges to grab liberal arts teachers, especially geography, and even an entire graduating class is collectively booked.
The free choice of subjects not only failed to achieve the goal of cultivating a whole-person student who studied both arts and sciences, but even disrupted the training order of universities - at that time, many university science and engineering majors recruited a group of people who did not have a foundation in physics or chemistry, and had to start making up classes from their freshman year. This is in fundamental conflict with the national will to focus on cultivating industrial scientific and technological talents, especially top-notch innovative talents.
Later, many provinces that successively introduced reform plans chose to abandon the "3+3" free subject selection model and revised it to "3+1+2", requiring physics or history to be compulsory, but this neglected the more difficult chemistry subjects. Until 2021, the "physical and chemical double selection" policy was introduced. It's as if we're back to square one.
The reform of the college entrance examination has fallen into an embarrassing situation of repeated and dilemma. What exactly is the problem? Some researchers believe that this is because the new college entrance examination has only carried out subject reforms, and has frozen the reform of "separating recruitment from examinations," which was originally included in the plan, and if the mode of admitting students according to a single score remains unchanged, it will be difficult for the reform to be complete and effective. The other school of thought is in stark tat-tat, arguing that the separation of admissions is nothing more than giving the right to recruit students, which is not in line with national conditions and is likely to undermine the cornerstone of fairness, and that the independent admissions system that has been explored since 2003 is a lesson from the past - because of a series of gray transactions and corruption, independent enrollment was completely ended in 2020.
There are too many and too complex interests to take into account in the college entrance examination, and the score-only theory has not been broken, but has been strengthened, and the pressure on high school students has not decreased, and even college students have rolled up their scores. The reform is still continuing, and in any case, for a long time to come, the selection of talents through the college entrance examination will remain the greatest common divisor in Chinese society. Every year, nearly 10 million young people from different regions and families who are in the golden age of 18 pass this exam and go to different life trajectories. In what direction the college entrance examination should be reformed, and what kind of attitude individuals should have to face the college entrance examination, more people need to think.
Stills from "The Big Exam".