On January 21, 2024, an art examination training institution in Beijing conducted professional training for art students in art examinations. (People's Vision/Picture)
"Art exams are shortcuts", this is the stereotype that some people have formed over the years, but the "shortcut" is gradually becoming a "single-plank bridge".
2024 is the first year of the full implementation of the art examination reform, and its biggest change is the improvement of the score line of cultural courses. The admission score of the school examination institutions has been raised to the second line, and the proportion of Chinese courses in the unified examination of colleges and universities has also been increased to 50%.
Such a change caught some art candidates off guard. The difference with the second main line is a few tens, so that many people have changed the distance from the target university from close to the target university to out of reach.
The score line suddenly increased by more than 100 points
Wang Haozhen has been very anxious lately. Born in 2005, he is an art repeat student in Taizhou, Zhejiang, and met a teacher who graduated from CAFA when he was studying painting at an institution, and was influenced by him, so he made up his mind to take the road of art examination.
He was luckier than most candidates. At present, he has obtained the school examination certificate of the China Academy of Art, with more than 500 ranks, and within the scope of Gome's enrollment index, as long as the cultural score reaches 488 points in the second main line of Zhejiang Province, he can be admitted. This mode of admission according to the ranking of majors after the cultural score has crossed the minimum control line is referred to as the "literary special ranking" by the art examination industry.
The admission of most art colleges and universities is based on the results of the cultural courses of the candidates participating in the national college entrance examination, combined with the results of the professional courses organized by the Provincial Education Examination Institute. However, a small number of colleges and universities with distinctive professional characteristics and high quality of talent training will organize school examinations on the basis of the unified examination. The content and difficulty of the school examination vary from school to school, and the admission criteria are more flexible, generally lasting from January to mid-March, after the unified examination of professional courses. The prerequisite for applying for the school examination is to pass the unified examination.
What bothers Wang Haozhen is very much is precisely the cultural points. In 2023, the score line for the cultural course of art majors in Zhejiang Province is 366 points, which is 75% of the second line, compared with the score line in 2024, which has increased by more than 100 points all at once. Wang Haozhen's cultural class score can currently score 420 points, and Nu Li can score 450 points, but there is still a distance from the second line. According to the admission principle of "Wenguo Special Row", the certificate of the China Academy of Art may have become a waste of paper for him.
The second line has become an obstacle on the way for many art candidates to go on to higher education. According to the information released by the Shandong Provincial Education Admissions Examination Institute, there will be 51,743 candidates who have passed the unified examination for art majors in the province in 2023. Among the more than 50,000 candidates, 32,792 can achieve 332 points (75% of the second main line), but only 3,027 can achieve 443 points in the second main line of the province.
Wang Haozhen's roommate will be admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts of Minzu University of China in 2023, with a total score of 372 in cultural classes. In fact, Wang Haozhen will get the re-examination certificate of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2023, and his professional ranking is still in the top 200. But unfortunately, he did not pass the re-examination of Gome, so he chose to repeat it.
For Wang Haozhen, there is still a glimmer of hope. This year, he obtained the school examination certificate of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, ranking in the top 10%, and has the opportunity to be admitted exceptionally, that is, the cultural score can be reduced to 85% of the second line, about 415 points.
However, the premise of the exception is that the school is not satisfied, that is, the number of candidates who pass the school examination is lower than the number of students enrolled by the school, and the school will generally issue a certificate according to four times the number of enrollments, so the only hope is also slim.
In Wang Haozhen's repeating class, there are more than 20 students, and the cultural classes are generally concentrated in 400 to 450 points. After learning that the premise of admission to the school examination institution is that the cultural score is not lower than the second line, some people take the initiative to give up the re-examination, "even if the re-examination is passed, the cultural score is difficult to achieve."
Li Yiran from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, is a fresh candidate. Her cultural score can reach the second line of 465 in the province in the second year of high school, but due to the unsatisfactory results of the professional course, she has been preparing for the unified examination of art major courses in the first semester of the third year of high school, and in the first three months of 2024, she is still running between different schools for the school examination. After not touching a textbook for eight months, she came back and found that she "didn't know anything", and now her cultural class score is still more than 50 points short of the second line.
After a round of school examinations, Li Yiran only got the certificate of passing the lowest ranking of Gome, and his first thought was to go to the studio to return to the furnace, and for another year, he would stumble on the three top-level art academies "Guoyangqing" (namely the China Academy of Art, the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts). But she was stopped by her mother, on the grounds that the policy has been changing in the past two years, and 2024 is the last year of Henan's old college entrance examination, "Maybe next year's cultural class exam will not be as good as this year, so I can go."
In the liberal arts class next door to Li Yiran, there are two students who study dance, and after learning that the score of the cultural class is going to reach the second line, they are very devastated, "I can go to school before, but now I don't necessarily, I often see them going crazy in the circle of friends, and a bunch of letter abbreviations vent their emotions."
On February 26, 2024, at the entrance of the professional course examination center of the China Academy of Art. (Photo provided by the interviewee/photo)
In fact, there have been rules for a long time
There are signs of change. For example, those candidates who have repeated their studies for three or four years are all in a hurry to leave last year, and today's repeater classes are basically candidates who have repeated a year like Wang Haozhen.
Wang Haozhen also happened to hear the news that the cultural score was going to be improved to the second line during the 2023 college entrance examination, but he had a bit of a fluke mentality, "it won't suddenly increase so much", so he didn't take it to heart.
Wang Haozhen's current classmate Xu Qian did not hear about this news from schools and training institutions before repeating his studies. It wasn't until the end of December 2023 that she noticed it after some school examination institutions released their admission brochures.
"Why did it suddenly get more than 100 points higher", Xu Qian didn't believe it at first, but looked at it several times, still surprised. She discussed with her classmates, and everyone was a little confused about the admissions rules.
In fact, this regulation that they are not clear about was issued by the Ministry of Education as early as September 2021, that is, the "Guiding Opinions on Further Strengthening and Improving the Enrollment of Art Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities", which clarified the direction and time node of the art examination reform, which will be promoted from 2021 and basically completed by 2024.
In this reform, the scope and scale of school examinations have been greatly reduced. From 2024, the provincial unified examination for six art majors, including music, dance, acting (directing), broadcasting and hosting, art and design, and calligraphy, will be fully implemented. At the same time, only 38 colleges and universities have carried out school examinations for some art majors, compared with nearly 100 in 2019. For art majors covered by the unified examination, many colleges and universities will directly use the results of the unified examination to recruit students.
In November 2023, the Ministry of Education issued the Notice on Doing a Good Job in the Enrollment of Some Special Types of Ordinary Colleges and Universities in 2024, requiring the implementation of the guidance issued in September 2021.
Whether it is the national art examination enrollment policy or the art examination enrollment reform practice of colleges and universities, the proportion and importance of cultural achievements are constantly being strengthened. Before 2016, the minimum score for admission to art undergraduate majors in each province was not less than 60% of the second line, but since 2016, this standard has been raised to 65%, and in 2019, it has been increased to 75%.
For the unified examination route that more art students will choose, the Ministry of Education also requires that the proportion of cultural course scores should not be less than 50% when calculating the comprehensive score.
In the past, the results of art majors in Shandong Province accounted for 30%, the scores of dance majors in Zhejiang Province accounted for 40%, and the scores of music majors in Hebei Province accounted for 30%, and they will all be implemented at 50% in 2024.
"What makes it different this time is that it is documented and implemented as a hard condition. Wang Xiaoshu, a professor at Guangzhou University's Academy of Fine Arts, explained to Southern Weekend that in the past, schools may have only increased the proportion of cultural classes from 30% to 40%, but now they will all increase to 50%, so cultural classes will naturally be taken seriously.
And the anxiety and helplessness of these students are still due to the fact that they know the news too late and have limited buffer time.
Xu Qian did not regret repeating her studies, because her professional unified examination score increased from 249 to 271, which made her more comfortable, but she didn't expect that she should focus more on cultural classes. She hasn't touched a cultural class for more than half a year, and she feels a little difficult to get into the second line, and recently she found out a small problem with her body, but she didn't have time to do surgery, so she could only wait for the college entrance examination to end.
And Wang Haozhen now thinks that the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts is not bad, and he knew that he went there last year.
The number of applicants has decreased
The most immediate change after the reform is the decrease in the number of applicants.
According to data from the Anhui Provincial Education Admissions Examination Institute, in the 2024 provincial unified examination, there will be 24,000 art and design candidates, a decrease of nearly 8,000 from 2023. The number of applicants for the China Academy of Art will be 56,000 in 2020, 38,000 in 2023, and 28,000 in 2024, only half of 2020.
The staff of the admissions office of the Central Academy of Fine Arts told Southern Weekend that the biggest difference between the students who apply for the examination in 2024 and the previous ones will be in the cultural class, "If the cultural class is too low and cannot be admitted to the undergraduate line, they may give up."
Li Jian, deputy director of the Visual Aesthetic Education Center of the Institute of Aesthetic Education of Southwest University, said in an interview with Southern Weekend that after the reform of the art examination, the selection goals will be clearer and more professional, and there will be fewer opportunities for students with speculative psychology.
China's art examination fever has continued since around 2002. The number of colleges and universities with art majors in the country has increased from 597 in 2002 to nearly 2,000 today. With the craze for art examinations, the art examination training market has grown savagely. According to the data, from 2015 to 2022, the scale of the art examination training market increased from 27.45 billion yuan to 53.56 billion yuan, and the number of art examination institutions increased from 873 to 6,474.
Preparing for an art exam can be expensive. Li Yiran's tuition fee for half a year of intensive training is 100,000 yuan, and repeat students like Wang Haozhen naturally cost more.
Zhou Liang entered the art training industry in 2016, and he really felt the impact of the policy. "Even in the three years of the pandemic, the number of students did not decline, and institutions just switched offline classes to online, and now that the score line has increased, many students will give up this option. "The decline in the number of students has led to a shrinking market and difficulties in recruiting students. He learned that 80 per cent of institutions had closed or changed careers in the past two years.
"We need to increase publicity so that more people know about it," Zhou Liang said, adding that if high school teachers don't promote it, institutional training practitioners hope that transparency will come as late as possible.
Li Jian learned that there are several large-scale chain art examination training institutions in Chongqing that are changing careers to run art high schools, "which can recruit a large number of students in cultural courses, and art training is only one of its characteristics."
From a macro point of view, the state and universities are also controlling the expansion of art majors.
According to data released by the Ministry of Education, in 2021, a total of 69 institutions withdrew 110 art majors, and in 2022, a total of 79 institutions withdrew 113 art majors.
The "Notice of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education on Carrying out the Establishment of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities in 2023" issued by the Ministry of Education clearly states that the establishment of art majors should be strictly controlled, and the application for the establishment of art majors by colleges and universities should be in line with the school's positioning. For majors with too low employment rates and those that do not meet the needs of society, colleges and universities should be cautious in adding them and reducing them in a timely manner.
Why the emphasis is on cultural lessons
Liao Aimin, an associate professor at Sichuan University, pointed out in the article "The Importance of Cultural Achievements in Art Examinations and Its Reform Measures" that for a long time, there has been a concept of "emphasizing majors and ignoring culture" in the enrollment of art majors, which is mainly reflected in the low requirements for the enrollment of art majors in cultural courses. This also gives hope to a large number of candidates with low cultural scores, thinking that they can find a "shortcut" to college through the art examination.
Li Fengxia, deputy director of the public course teaching department of Shandong Institute of Arts and Crafts, once analyzed 1,610 freshmen in the class of 2013 as an example, and their college entrance examination English pass rate was 20.4%. In the same year, the passing rate of college entrance examination English for general arts and science students was above 50%.
However, judging from the number of applicants for the art examination, the art examination has become more and more hot in the past few years, and the competition has become more and more fierce. In 2020, the number of applicants for the national art examination will be 1.17 million, accounting for 10.92% of the total number of applicants for the college entrance examination, while in 2002, when the art examination fever was just starting, the number of applicants was 32,000.
In fact, the requirements for improving the cultural courses of art students have also been mentioned repeatedly. More than ten years ago, when Wang Xiaoshu was still a member of the Art Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education, he and Cao Yiqiang, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, proposed that art education should strengthen the weight of cultural courses, and even wrote a proposal. He sighed that now it is really implemented.
"For most art candidates, it must be difficult to reach the second line", Wang Xiaoshu believes that now the requirements for cultural courses are raised, and the screening criteria are changed, although some candidates are stuck outside the door, but also candidates with better (cultural course scores) are put in. For example, if the school admits 50 candidates out of 100, the 25 who score better in Chinese may take advantage of it.
"In the past, more than 200 points in cultural classes were recorded, but those more than 400 points were not recorded, who did they talk to?" Wang Xiaoshu's more than 40 years of teaching experience is that students with a high level of education and relatively weak professional level when they enter the school may even become the best professional level in the class after four years. Because they have stronger awareness, comprehension and judgment skills, they are more likely to do more with less in the learning process.
Li Yiran also agrees with this, it is more advantageous to be eager to learn art in cultural classes, otherwise, you may not understand why you paint like this, why you have to deal with it weakly here and strong it there.
Wang Xiaoshu said that there are pains in any reform, but more to consider whether there is a promotion effect on the industry, he believes that after this round of reform, art colleges should be able to absorb a group of students who really love art, have artistic talent, and have a high level of education.
At present, there is only more than a month left before the college entrance examination, and Li Yiran is still struggling to reach the second line. Since the second round of review at school has ended, Li Yiran can't keep up with the progress, so she can only take a one-to-three small class cultural class in the institution, while Xu Qian takes one-on-one private online classes at home. And the cost of these cultural classes is actually quite expensive.
Before the unified examination in December, most of the art candidates will carry out a six-month intensive training. The time was very tight, I had classes at 8 o'clock in the morning, finished at 12 o'clock in the evening, and continued to draw homework after returning to the dormitory. Xu Qian remembers that some students took the small table lamp to the dark studio and hung it at a position that could just shine on the drawing board, and waved the paintbrush in their hands with the help of the faint light. She was always sweating and wanting to vomit, but she would force herself to keep drawing.
"People always say that art is a shortcut, and I really want to fight back when I see that kind of remark on the Internet. Li Yiran said.
Wang Xiaoshu said that under the premise of the big situation, we should try to do some compensatory work for these students, or formulate effective policies for them, so that they can also move forward along the right path.
Li Jian said, "Both parents and students should be soberly aware that they may have to pay more to learn art in the future."
• (At the request of the interviewee, the names of the candidates and the teachers of the training institutions have been changed.) ）
Southern Weekly reporter Wei Cuicui, Southern Weekly intern Zhang Yejing, Xu Yuqin
Editor-in-charge: Qian Wei