The Gaokao challenge

There is a word, unknown in this country, which once a year strikes terror into the hearts of millions of young people: Gaokao. This is the slang term for the Chinese National Higher Education Entrance Examinations, and though only a few translated questions have found their way out of the secretive state, their level of complexity raises serious concerns about our own education system. The results released by Pisa (the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment) this week not only raise the same concerns but absolutely confirm them. The Pisa people tested nearly half a million 15-year-olds worldwide, in maths, literacy and science. What did they find? China comes top; Britain 25th, having dropped several places since the last study.

I remember my own first encounter with a Gaokao question all too clearly. I was in the Junior Common Room at Trinity College, Oxford, where I am an undergraduate, when a friend bounded up to me: ‘I’ve found something on the internet that will make you feel utterly inadequate,’ she beamed as she showed me some exam questions on her laptop.