Good Samaritans set to gain extra gaokao points

Students in some regions of China will be awarded extra points for good morality or Samaritan acts in the upcoming gaokao, or national college entrance examinations.

Thirty-one provincial level regions in China announced new policies in 2014 for gaokao, and 13 of them will give bonus points for student good behavior.

Ten provincial-level regions plan to give 10 extra points to students with good morality. Beijing, Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces will reward these students with an extra 20 points, the Beijing-based Legal Mirror reported.

China's policy that rewards students who excel in sports or academic competitions with extra gaokao points has been criticized for its misuse.

There have been many cases of students fabricating their records of sports or academic performance in a bid to gain extra marks.

With the large numbers of Chinese students competing in gaokao every year, which falls on June 7 and 8, an extra 20 or so points could mean getting into universities a level better than their test scores demonstrate.

At the same time, some cities are reducing other subjects that can grant students extra points in the exams.

Beijing, where some 70,000 students register annually to take the examinations on average, has reduced the number of points to 10 for 15 types of sporting activities. Ethnic minority students will only have five extra points compared to other students, five points less than last year.

Education authorities from eight provinces announced that students who excel in academic competitions will not get any bonus points.

Education experts view the point reductions as a move to ensure fair play and transparency of the gaokao.

Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow from the National Institute of Education Sciences, told the Legal Mirror that the former policy had loopholes as some rich or powerful people could take advantage of it to get extra points which they don't deserve.

China still needs a better supervisory body to oversee this extra point policy in order to prevent students' dreams being stolen by privilege, Zhu said.