CCTV News:In recent years, the momentum of the rapid expansion of off-campus training courses has not diminished, with students ranging from middle school students, primary school students to preschool children, among which subject training courses are particularly popular. In some big cities, more and more parents are involved in a battle called "Chicken Baby".
Here, "chicken" has changed from a noun to a verb, which means to "give the child chicken blood""Keep arranging extracurricular classes for children and keep taking off-campus exams. It seems that everything has naturally moved from school to off-campus. What is the original intention of parents?
In recent days, a series of exams from an off-campus training institution are being rolled out in some cities all over the country. The exams are aimed at students from kindergarten middle class to fifth grade in primary school. The subjects are Chinese, mathematics and English, and the exam methods are mainly online.Students who register for their summer and autumn classes this year should be selected and stratified. According to their grades, they will enter different classes from low to high difficulty.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:Our system is divided into three parts: excellent system, innovative system and interest system. In the preliminary round, diligence and sensitivity can be offered to every child in front of the screen.
This exam has aroused parents’ increasing concern and heated discussion. In some parents’ groups, everyone exchanged experiences and lamented the difficulty of the topic to see whose child was admitted to the highest class, and its fiery degree even far exceeded any in-school exam.
Mr. Wang, the candidate’s parents: My child took the exam from grade four to grade five. I can still do it at the initial test. I can’t answer many questions in the second test for a short time. I doubt how I got into the university myself.
Mr. Wang said that it is such an exam that the test difficulty is much higher than the school level. When the registration was released in early March this year, it was necessary to grab the quota.
Candidates’ parents, Mr. Wang:I grabbed the opportunity when I made up the second batch of newspapers, and I set the alarm clock at 12 noon.
Some parents told reporters in the interview that the reason why they want to participate in the selection of training courses is that they hope to skip the "allocation" and enter their favorite quality schools.
Reporter:What is the original intention and purpose of giving classes to children?
Parents of primary school students:I can’t help it. It’s like this now. If you don’t learn Olympic Mathematics, you will have no choice at the beginning of your junior high school!
Reporter:Isn’t it assigned?
Parents of primary school students:Yes, it is, but it will be too late for you to wait until you are assigned, and the selection has already been made before.
"early training" grabs opportunities, and the institution "going to school" creates anxiety.
As early as 2014, the Ministry of Education initiated the reform of compulsory education, and clarified the principle of "school enrollment and students’ enrollment nearby". But at the same time, a small number of high-quality schools are still allowed to carry out the "experimental project of early training of extraordinary children", that is, "early training". In the investigation, the reporter found that these training paths, which were originally designed for a very small number of truly gifted children, have become business opportunities for off-campus training institutions, and parents and children have been dragged in one after another.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:Now, the Education Commission has explicitly banned participation in that kind of cup, but there are still some. The cup that used to be a show has now become this camp, that camp, camp events and so on. Going to the camp is to take this kind of exam.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:Moreover, they sometimes refer to our grades when they are "trained early" and when they take exams.They will look at this when they choose, so I told you that no matter whether we think high or learn to think, you must take the large-scale exam as long as you are notified.
Some parents report that staff of off-campus training institutions often teach them "the classics of entering a higher school", suggesting that some schools have expanded the scope of "early training" or "recruit" high-quality students in their eyes, so long as they participate in their various "selections", they may be selected by middle schools. Because public schools reduce the burden, students’ test scores are not well differentiated, so their scores can be used as a basis.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:Look at your resume. Is it beautiful or not? If your resume is beautiful, you are nothing more than taking part in any cup and any exam. For example, both children got 100 points in the exam, but in English, he got the FCE (Cambridge First English Certificate Examination) certificate, and you got the PET (Cambridge English Elementary Examination) certificate. People will definitely want FCE. Now if you take English classes after class, you don’t have to learn school English.
Taking the test score scale officially released by Cambridge English General Test as a benchmark, we can see that KET corresponds to the domestic junior high school English level, PET corresponds to the domestic senior high school English level, and FCE is equivalent to IELTS score of 5.5— 7.0 points, reaching the level of studying abroad.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:A child came that day, anyway, he was very young, so he said that KET had passed, and then he had to prepare PET.
The introduction of other people’s children by training institutions is the most exciting thing for parents. In this way, many parents are involved in the ranks of English proficiency tests. In Shanghai, in order to compete for a KET/PET exam place, the registration fee for the exam was scrambled from 500 yuan to 4,000 yuan. In Beijing, it is a success to get an exam place in a foreign province and city.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:Last year, another one of us went to Hunan to take the exam.
Staff of an off-campus training institution:We still have people going to Yunnan here, so we’ll be satisfied if we grab them. Just take our children for a few days and take a two-day leave.
The chaos of off-campus training is frequent, and "shadow training" has a great influence.
Parents flooded into off-campus training and invested a lot of money and energy in order to win the "stepping stone" of a high-quality prestigious school with their beautiful resumes. The reporter learned that this "resume anxiety" has spread from the early stage of junior high school to preschool children in the early stage of junior high school.
Among some parents, there are many parents of preschool children sharing their experiences. I heard that some primary schools have also set up experimental classes for teaching reform, commonly known as "early training". They hope to enter this system through preschool training. The reporter’s investigation found that all major off-campus training institutions have launched advanced training for preschool children.
Customer service of an off-campus training institution:(Kindergarten small class) Mathematics is about learning seven abilities, learning mathematical sense, logical thinking ability, cultivating his spatial imagination, logical reasoning, etc. This is a mathematics subject, and then he will speak some reading comprehension of Chinese, learn simple articles for children to listen to, etc., as well as English, mainly starting from 26 English letters, and simple vocabulary.
Many parents will prepare resumes for their children to participate in the "early training". In a parent group, the reporter saw two resumes of preschool children. The first child can not only complete the mixed operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within 100, but also attend the innovative class with the highest olympiad number in an institution. He also passed the English Cambridge KET exam and learned 2000 Chinese characters, even though he did not pass the sea election. Another child with a basic level passed the sea election, and the reason is that the latter one got 145 in the IQ test of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
According to the method of group friends’ guidance, the reporter found the WeChat WeChat official account of "Zhongke Extraordinary Children", clicked on the appointment, and saw that the number had been fully booked by the end of May.
Reporter:I want to ask how old children can we test?
Staff of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences:Over 5 years old, 130 points is extraordinary. From March to July now, it is the peak season. Many parents made an appointment two or three months in advance. In the past two years, after the IQ test was approved by the early training, there were many people who made an appointment.
Behind all kinds of off-campus training chaos, a large number of brushing questions and exam-taking skills have also become one of the main aspects of criticism. For example, in a class of "cube dismantling", the teacher directly summed up the problem-solving skills of how to judge that "the unfolded diagram of a cube cannot be formed" as "there is no field, no concave and no big right angle". Students know why, but they don’t know why, so they can answer the questions by mechanical memory. In a Chinese class in a training institution, the teacher even stylized writing and summed up the writing skills of "having images".
Zhang Yu, Vice President of Tsinghua University Education Research Institute:Extracurricular remedial classes also have a name, which is called "shadow education" in academic circles. It is like the shadow of formal education, because the existence of extracurricular remedial classes exists for students to achieve better performance in formal education, but I think it is actually not a shadow, it is another system, and it has actually seriously affected our formal education.
As early as 2018, the state has made it clear that it is resolutely forbidden to take exams, exceed the standard, advance training and be linked to enrollment. However, we can see that under the various packages of training institutions, advanced training is still active, and more and more parents and children are involved. In order to end the chaos in the off-campus training market, the fundamental solution is to block the entrance selection of high-quality schools by disguised examinations and competitions, and cut off the connection between off-campus training institutions and enrollment in primary and secondary schools.