Students warned over cramming risks
An archive picture shows parents and students outside the famous Maotanchang Middle School after class.
Students taking cramming classes outside the city have been reminded of the risks by the local education authority after a program claiming to prepare them for the gaokao, or college entrance exam, at the Maotanchang Middle School in Anhui Province was stopped.
An official with the education bureau in Lu'an’s Jin’an District in Anhui, where the school is located, told Shanghai Daily on Tuesday that the program had not been registered at the bureau and had falsely claimed to be run by the Maotanchang Middle School, which is famous for gaokao preparation.
An advertisement went viral over the weekend, saying that Maotanchang Middle School had launched a special program to admit Shanghai students who were not satisfied with their performance in this year’s college entrance exam. It said classes would start on August 15.
Named after the east Chinese town of Maotanchang, the school is known as “the largest gaokao factory in Asia” for putting students through at least 14 hours a day of rigorous preparation for the exam.
The advertisement said that this year more than 11,000 of the school’s students, or 96 percent of the total, achieved scores higher than the minimum requirement for bachelor-degree programs at Chinese universities.
It advertised the town at the foot of the Dabie Mountain as an ideal place for study as it was a two-hour drive from the nearest city, thus keeping students free of any distractions.
“Students are not allowed to use cellphones or computers while all dormitory rooms were built without sockets on purpose. Students are banned from love affairs and the township government has outlawed all entertainment venues, making it the only town in China without digital game stores, billiard pubs and Internet bars,” said the advertisement.
The advertisement said students would start studying at 6:20am and end at 10:50pm every day, with half an hour for lunch and supper and a one-hour break at noon.
“From daybreak to late night, the students will immerse themselves in attending classes, doing exercises and analyzing mistakes, spending every minute improving their scores in gaokao,” it said.
The program was to charge 60,000 yuan (US$8,723) for each student with a gaokao score at or above 403 points, this year’s minimum requirement for Shanghai students to be accepted by bachelor-degree programs in Chinese universities, while those with lower scores would have to pay 1,500 yuan for each point below the standard.
The advertisement quickly spread on social media, with some questioning whether the Maotanchang style could work for the Shanghai gaokao, while some said it was a backward step for Shanghai students to take test-oriented classes when the city has been promoting all-round development in education.
The office of Yu Daojiang, who claimed to be an alumnus of Maotanchang Middle School and that his company was the only agent for a cramming program’s admission in Shanghai.
Shanghai Daily contacted Yu Daojiang, who claimed to be an alumnus of Maotanchang Middle School and that his company, Shanghai Maijianshi Information Technology Co, was the only agent for the program’s admission in Shanghai, and visited his office in the Zhonggeng Global Creative Center in Shanghai’s Minhang District, pretending to be a parent interested in the program.
Yu said a lot of parents had approached him and an organized visit to the school on Saturday had been fully booked.
When asked whether Shanghai students will be taught inside the Maotanchang Middle School by its teachers, he said the program would not be run directly by the famous school, but by a training center at Jin’an Senior High School, a private school set up by Maotanchang Middle School.
“Although they will be taught by different teachers, they will be trained in the same model,” he said.
He also said teachers had carried out research into Shanghai textbooks and gaokao outlines, and they were ready to teach Shanghai students.
He said the program planned to admit 300 Shanghai students, who will have to do 1,000 to 5,000 sets of exercise papers in the following year, depending on their ability, to help each of them improve 100 to 150 points in their final score in the gaokao. But he also said no refunds would be given if students failed to achieve the target.
He said an interview would be necessary for applicants and they will select those physically and mentally healthy with a strong desire for study and resistance to stress, as well as good study ability.
He refused to give details of applicants but other media had quoted him and reported that a graduate of Shanghai High School who got 521 points out of 660 in this year’s gaokao had registered for the program. However, an official from the school told Shanghai Daily this was not true.
No parents showed up at the office during the hour on Tuesday morning when Shanghai Daily was there.
Shanghai Daily made numerous calls to Maotanchang Middle School, but none was answered.
However, an official surnamed He from the Jin’an District Education Bureau told Shanghai Daily by phone that they had noticed the program and launched an investigation.
“We’ve found that it had nothing to do with the Maotanchang Middle School, which is a public school and not allowed to run cramming programs,” he said. “As far as I know, it was a Shanghai-based company that authorized the training center at the Jin’an Senior High School to offer cramming classes for Shanghai students.”
He said the training center was legally registered at the bureau but the program was not.
“We decided to stop it because it had not gone through any feasibility verification against the backdrop of different educational systems in Shanghai and Anhui,” he added.
Shanghai Daily later found that notifications about the launch of the program on the websites of the two schools had been deleted while a channel on WeChat for parents to pay a trip to the school on Saturday had been closed.
Yu did not reply to further phone calls or WeChat messages.
The education bureau in Shanghai’s Minhang District has asked the local market supervision and management department to investigate, according to a statement released on Tuesday afternoon by the Shanghai Education Commission.
The commission stressed that all educational training activities organized either in the city or outside by Shanghai-based organizations or individuals should be approved by local district education bureaus.
It reminded students and parents to be cautious about the risks when taking cramming classes outside Shanghai.
The market supervision and management department in Minhang confirmed that it has conducted a primary inspection on Yu’s company and will further investigate it for false advertising.
Shanghai Daily also found in the company’s profile that its approved business scale did not include educational service.
An archive picture shows people saying goodbye to students leaving the renowned Maotanchang Middle School in Anhui Province to take the gaokao.
