The challenge of academic writing for Chinese students within ...

The Chinese education system
As the world‘s most populous nation, China probably has the largest education system in the
world in terms of student numbers enrolled. The survey (2007a) of the Ministry of Education
of the People‘s Republic of China (MoE) estimated over 318 million students were enrolled
in 630,000 schools in 2006, which is 5 times more than the UK population. In China the
education system consists of basic education, higher education and adult education. As
illustrated in Figure 1.4 basic education comprises primary and secondary education
(including lower and senior middle schools, and specialized secondary and vocational
secondary schools); higher education consists of 4-year university education, 2 or 3-year
college education, graduate education (including master‘s and PhD); higher education also
takes the forms of radio/TV specialized university education, and self-taught examination
which are often associated with adult education; adult education comprises literacy classes,
professional and vocational training, radio/TV specialized university education, and selfdirected
examination preparation.
China‘s primary and lower secondary education is stipulated in the Compulsory Education
Law of 1986 (MoE, 1995) as compulsory. Parents are legally-bound to ensure their children‘s
completion of nine-year compulsory education. The regulation has greatly contributed to the
universalisation of nine-year basic education in China although the enrollment rate before
1986 was already very high. The statistics (MoE, 2007b) show that the total enrollment of
primary schools in 2006 was around 100 million with an enrollment ratio of 99.3% compared
with the total enrollment of 99 million and ratio of 95.9% in 1985. The total enrollment ratio
of lower secondary schools in 2006 was 101.9%, representing a rise of 35.2% compared with
that of 1990 (MoE, 2007c). The 9 th 5-year Plan for China‘s Educational Development and the
Development Outline by 2010 (MoE, 1996) projected the achievement of universalisation of
nine-year compulsory education by 2010 with 135 million primary school students and 55
million lower secondary school students. MoE (2009) envisages by 2020 China would
achieve the basic universalization of higher secondary education (MoE, 2009).
Achieving universal access to higher secondary education will be quite a challenge
considering the current emphasis on examinations. Chinese education system is examinationdriven.
The examination tradition in China can be traced back to the 7 th century when the
imperial civil service examination was officially established as mentioned above. Today,
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