The China State Council announced several guidelines on reforming China's examination and enrolment system on 4 September. The guidelines revealed the time line to launch the reform pilot programme in 2014, implement across the country in 2017 and establish the advanced system by 2020. The new characteristics of the system are diverse classification exams, comprehensive assessment system and multidimensional enrolment mechanism. As such, the reform will significantly change the result evaluation system and enrolment mechanisms. China's Ministry of Education has selected Shanghai and Zhejiang Province as the pilot areas. The pilot programme will apply to students who are enrolled in high schools this autumn. Other students will continue to go through the current system.

The major changes, according to the guidelines, are that students will not be asked to pick their preferred choice of major, either liberal arts or sciences.

Meanwhile, the final Gaokao results will be composed of two parts. One is the results on three major subjects, namely Chinese, Mathematics, and English, which are to be tested at a fixed date. As for English, students are allowed to take exam twice and submit their best result. The other part is students' academic performances in high school, including 14 subjects such as History, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, etc. and the results are described as either a pass or fail. When they apply for university, they could select three among the 14 subjects’ results based on the major they want to apply and their strengths. In addition, students' overall qualities will also be taken into account when the university enrols students.

The new regulations will also put in place a separate assessment system for higher vocational institution applicants with balanced assessment on students’ academic ability and vocational/technical skills. Under the new system, the higher vocational institutes will select high school graduates according to their vocational adaptability assessment, i.e. their high school academic performances and overall qualities. The institutions will select secondary vocational school graduates based on their test results on academic ability and vocational skills. The tests will be organised by the correspondent provinces. By 2015, the new assessment system will apply to half of higher vocational institutes’ applicants and will apply to majority of applicants by 2017.

We will provide more details of the implementation plan with our comments when they are available.