Exam results that don’t add up

A recent report released by a Beijing-based institute, DK Education, reveals that only 7 percent of Chinese students passed the SAT exam. SAT is the college admission exam in the US, roughly equivalent to the gaokao in China.

At first glance, the result appears to be somewhat shocking as it means more than 90 percent of Chinese students failed the test. Some education experts jumped to the conclusion that Chinese students lacked critical thinking skills and that therefore China's educational system is less developed than that of the US.

While it is true that Chinese students need to improve their critical thinking skills, which is an important part of the SAT, the report does not offer a complete assessment of Chinese students' performances in the test.

The report is not a scientific study of the SAT scores of Chinese students. DK Education offers training courses such as SAT and TOEFL to Chinese students. So arguably the institute may want to report seemingly surprising findings such as this, because they know it will generate news reports and therefore provide them with free publicity for their services.

And the report findings were also based on results from mock SAT exams - and not the actual exams taken by senior high school students. The report also did not specify the size of the sample of students involved. The results from a study of 100 students are obviously going to be far less conclusive than, for example, a study of 10,000 students.

When the report says that only 7 percent of students passed the test, it means these students scored less than 1,800 points, the lowest score necessary for admission to a college in the US. The full scores for an SAT test are 2,400 points.

Even if we agree with the report findings that Chinese students performed poorly, it is completely understandable that non-native English speaking students will not fare as well as native speakers and this is the case with Chinese people.

And there is no official data available comparing the test scores for native and non-native students.

The SAT is a standardized assessment of a student's mathematical reasoning, critical reading and writing skills, which requires a high level of understanding in the English language.

Also, there are huge differences in the education systems between China and the US because of the cultural and social models that operate in both countries. For example, Chinese students tend to be more passive in the classroom (although this is gradually changing) while American students are used to asking lots of questions, and even challenging teachers, in the classroom.

"We shouldn't scare ourselves because of such a vague report," said a commentary in China Science Daily on November 2. "If American high school students sat one of China's gaokao tests, would they automatically get good grades?" it continued.

Nevertheless, I believe there is still something that China can learn from the US education system. China's education system puts too much stress on exam results, which almost turns Chinese students into test-taking machines.

And even a perfect SAT score doesn't guarantee a place in a top university in the US. Apart from good academic results, Chinese students need to broaden their horizons by joining in more extracurricular activities. In this way they will develop all-round interests, and this can also boost their chances of getting into a university.