School Life in China 

Student teacher In China, there are six years of elementary school, three years of middle school, and three years of high school. There is an exam at the end of middle school to decide who attends high school. Only 30 percent of middle school students go on to high school.
According to China’s 2020 census and the National Bureau of Statistics of China: The average years of schooling for people aged 15 and above increased from 9.08 years in 2010 to 9.91 years in 2020, and the illiteracy rate dropped from 4.08 percent to 2.67 percent in the same period. [Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, 
Primary and general secondary school students pay a nominal tuition fee. A typical school has few academic and athletic facilities other than a chalkboard, some desks, chairs and a Chinese flag and courtyard where children play. Better schools have a dirt soccer field. Few schools have air conditioning or heating. In the winter, teachers and students are often bundled up in heavy coats and gloves in the classrooms, their breath forming clouds.
Students are swamped with after school classes: music lesson, English, art and martial arts. All these activities are very competitive and rank students. English is graded on five levels. 
Piano-playing, 10. More than half of preteens take outside lessons. When parents are asked why they enroll their children in such classes the most often heard answer is “to raise the child’s future competitiveness.” When students are studying for major exams, parents switch television on mute so they can study better.
Students try to stay on their teacher’s good side, following the proverb: “A person who stands under someone else’s roof must bow his head,” If a kid is bullied and his parents are politically influentially they can pressure to have the bully transferred to another school. There are also stories of students getting into schools without taking entrance exams because their parents had a cousin who knew someone in the education bureau.
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