Recently, cities in China such as Qingdao in Shandong Province and Chengdu in Sichuan Province have issued notifications to cancel the city-wide final exams for first and second-year high school students. This announcement has sparked widespread discussions and become a hot topic online.
The news of canceling the final exams has been disclosed by netizens from various cities including Changsha, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Xiamen. According to a report by Southern Net on Tuesday, the staff at the Qingdao Institute for Education Science confirmed the news but mentioned that the institute will provide final exam papers for first and second-year students, and schools can choose to use them on a voluntary basis.
A staff member from the Chengdu Institute for Education Science also confirmed to the media the cancellation of the unified final exams for first and second-year students in the upper semester of the 2025-2026 academic year.
Following the announcement, the decision has sparked widespread debates as it involves numerous families with school-aged children.
From the viewpoints gathered so far, experts within the education system have come forward to support this policy. Xiong Bingqi, the director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, stated to the media, “Teaching should not center around exams; exams should only serve teaching, be used for evaluating students, rather than stimulating academic competition and intensifying student pressure.”
However, the feedback from netizens and parents has varied greatly.
Some netizens believe that canceling the finals is just a “superficial reduction of burden,” as schools will still frequently organize monthly exams, and the real learning pressure will not decrease. The key point is that the national college entrance examination and high school exams still exist, so competition will not decrease just because one exam is canceled. Some parents express concerns that without final exams, their children won’t be able to know their true level in the entire region or school. Additionally, some netizens state that the absence of final exams may lead to a decrease in motivation for some students.
Concerning schools, many parents are worried that more evaluation power will fall into the hands of schools and teachers, giving teachers more authority, making it potentially easier for “compliant children” to achieve good grades.
Moreover, parents are anxious that without unified exams, it will be more challenging for them to assess their children’s levels, leading to increased reliance on extracurricular tutoring.
Apart from parents, some teachers have also expressed doubts about the situation. Some teachers believe that although exams are canceled, the assessment indicators for teachers remain unchanged, increasing teaching pressures. Previously, with unified exam papers, poor results could be attributed to the overall difficulty; now it solely relies on the teachers’ efforts.