By Lin Jinsong and Yang Xiaoya (刘金松 杨筱雅)

News, Cover, Issue No. 535, Sept 5, 2011

Translated by Zhu Na

Original article: [Chinese]

A lack of resources in education has made competition for places even fiercer at Beijing’s best primary and junior high schools, testing the integrity of the school principals who oversee admissions.

Prosecutors in west Beijing recently sounded the alarm on corruption at school with the publication of a report entitled Drawing Attention to Criminal Exploitation of Official Responsibilities in the Education System.

Beijing has a unified exams system to control access to Beijing primary schools and junior high schools, with better schools requiring higher scores, but the 1986 Compulsory Education Law encouraged schools to welcome all eligible candidates in their neighborhood, and since 1998 certain schools have been using computerized lotteries to assign places.

Random selection by computer is the fairest way to control admission from primary to junior high schools, but this method is rarely used by the best known schools. The school affiliated to Renmin University, for example, doesn’t use such processes at all.

“Only ordinary people’s children join the computerized lottery for places,” one parent said. Her child’s class has 46 students, but less than a third of them entered by computer selection.

Computerized lotteries are mostly used by second-rate schools; the better schools are, the smaller the proportion of students selected by computerized lottery, according to a survey done by 21st Century Education Research Institution.

Junior high schools also use other methods to recruit students, mostly involving money or connections.

In 2011, there were 102,000 children leaving Beijing primary schools to enter junior high schools, with almost half of these allocated to children who attended training classes, top students who were recommended (推优), outstanding students in the science, arts and sports(特长生), those who participated in a “joint co-operation” program (共建生), and those whose parents have special social relations.

According to 21st Century Education Research Institution’s estimation, extracurricular training cost most students between 30,000 yuan and 80,000 yuan per year. Children start to attend such training classes from third grade in primary school; by sixth grade, when they enter to junior high school, the total cost could be 100,000 yuan or more. Given Beijing’s average per capital disposable income of 29,000 yuan, a three person household, could be spending almost half of its income on training courses for the child.

After such huge spending, the final results aren’t guaranteed. Take Haidian District for example, in 2010 there were 106 such training classes run by seven junior high schools, which then allocated places to pupils on these courses. Even so, there were only 560 places for the 5,000 or so pupils.

The competition for a place as a recommended student (推优) or one who is outstanding in science, arts and sports (特长生) is also costly. Some parents pay for their children to have weekly music lessons from the age of three.

The most exclusive route of entry is “joint co-operation” - with key schools cooperating with public institutions and large enterprises to provide their employees with “quality education” for their offspring. In the practice, such institutions and enterprises provide extra investment for schools by either using company funds or collecting funds from their employees in the name of “joint co-operation”. The schools consider this model to be the most stable source of revenue.

Some training institutions are linked to government education departments. For example, a training class run by Beijing West City District Retired Teachers Association is supervised by the Beijing West City District Education Commission.

Whichever selection method schools use, parents have to pay additional “sponsorship fees” for their children to study at the best schools.

Some parents said that before the school’s admission process starts, they were told about the fees. “They will directly tell you how much to pay and where,” said one parent. Before taking the payment, parents are given a blank piece of paper and asked to copy out a template application letter for “Voluntary Donation to Schools”. The basic content of the letter is that “I would like to make a voluntary contribution”.

These fees are initially deposited into bank accounts nominated by the District Education Commission or into bank account of Education Foundation, which channels 70% -80% of them back to schools.

    According to a report from the 21st Century Education Research Institution, Beijing’s primary and junior high schools generate 1.5 billion yuan revenue every year from school selection fees. If 70% of them are returned to schools, then the junior high schools receive more than 1 billion yuan.

At some schools, the fees from institutions and enterprises taking part in “joint-cooperation” programs are simply siphoned off to the certain members of staff.

Beijing West City District prosecutor Wang Chunlin recently wrote in a report that school principals’ power is too concentrated, with the “small hidden reserves” from “joint-cooperation” programs distributed on their orders. Currently, those funds described in corruption cases which are exposed to the public are only the tip of the iceberg, much larger funds are outside the overview of regulation and supervision.

Competition is also intense for places at kindergartens that provide a route into primary schools. Beijing’s top primary schools all have an exam for applicants, and the top ten such school charge sponsorship fees of between 250,000 yuan and 80,000 yuan.   

A report by 21st Century Education Research Institution revealed that in 2010, Zhongguancun First Elementary School recruited 10 classes in grade one with 36 students for each class, of which 8 classes are students who have to pay sponsorship fees to get into the school. Taking the lowest fees of 30,000 yuan per person, the school would still earn 8 million yuan.

In 2008, news broke that the former principal of No.3 Elementary School in Zhongguancun, one of Beijing’s best primary schools was suspected of embezzling part of the 100 million yuan that the school had collected in “sponsorship fees.”