The Ministry of Education has stopped co-hosting Cambridge English exams, which are popular with primary school students' parents who are looking to secure places in good middle schools for their children.

The ministry's National Education Examinations Authority said in a brief statement last week that after consultation with Cambridge Assessment English, it would stop hosting the Cambridge Main Suite Examinations.

They include the massively oversubscribed Key English Test, the Preliminary English Test and the First Certificate in English, all favored by parents in first-tier Chinese cities.

Some have even resorted to taking their children to other cities or paying as much as eight times the testing fees to secure spots in the exams for their children.

Cambridge Assessment English said in a WeChat post last week it would adopt a new service model and gradually release a testing schedule. When answering netizen's questions under the post, it confirmed it would continue to host the exams this year but did not give further details.

A report by China Central Television last month said parents needed to pay after-school training institutions 4,000 yuan ($611) in exam fees to secure a spot in the Key English Test and the same amount for the Preliminary English Test, when each should cost just 500 yuan.

The report also said there was only one test center in Shanghai in December with 200 spots, and one after-school training institution claimed it could secure 167 spots of those spots.

Around 20,000 students signed up for the exams across the country in 2016, but that figure increased to more than 150,000 last year, the report said.

Education experts said the reason for the increasing popularity of the Cambridge English tests is that the ministry has banned domestic certificate tests and competitions targeting primary and middle school students to reduce their academic burden.

Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of online education portal EOL, said the ministry has reiterated many times that test and competition results should not be associated with school enrollment, and primary school students should be enrolled in the middle schools nearest to their homes without any entry test.

However, there is still great competition among parents to get their students into a handful of "super schools" that can admit students regardless of their location and require students to have certificates showing they have passed tests like the Cambridge Main Suite Examinations.

As all parents want their children to receive a good education, schools with better education resources need to find new ways to evaluate students, and parents will continue to sign their children up for popular exams that prove their capabilities, Chen said.

Chu Zhaohui, senior researcher with the National Institute of Education Sciences, said the exit of the NEEA from the exams might not be enough to reduce their popularity as schools might still use them to evaluate prospective students given the lack of domestic counterparts.

The key to solving the fierce competition among primary and middle school students is to continue reform of the exam-oriented education system and make the distribution of education resources more equitable between different schools and schools in different regions, Chu said.

Undeterred parents
Zou Ye, the mother of a sixth grader in Beijing's Xicheng district, said her daughter passed the PET with distinction in December and is preparing for the FCE.

While the KET is supposed to be taken by middle school students and PET by high school students, many parents in Xicheng have prepared their children for the tests since first grade as a handful of the best middle schools in the district require applicants to have the certificates.

Zou's family spends around 30,000 yuan a year on after-school English training, and it has helped her daughter significantly improve her English proficiency, she said.

The NEEA's decision to stop co-hosting the exams would not make her any less determined to see her daughter continue training for them, Zou said.
"It's not only for being enrolled in a good middle school, but also about improving her overall English ability, which is crucial for her future success," she said.

Yang Yang, the mother of a sixth grader in Beijing's Chaoyang district, said her daughter passed the KET in fifth grade and the PET in sixth grade thanks to the three hours of after-school training she took every week.

Although Chaoyang's middle schools do not require students to have such certificates, no parents want their children to be left behind, and learning a foreign language should start as early as possible, Yang said.

"My only hope is that there will be more spots available in the future so it won't be so difficult to secure one," she said.