BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.8, No.2, 2021 1143 

 

 

 

 

Super High Schools: Improving or Reducing the 

Educational Quality of High Schools in Different 

Provinces? 

By Guo, C., Xu Z., & Zhang, S. 
Correspondence to: Guo, C., Institute of Economics of Education, Peking Uni-

versity, Beijing, China 100871. Email: cbguoguoguo@pku.edu.cn  

ITH the extremely high enrollment rate and the high rate of being ad-

mitted by Peking University and Tsinghua University, to some extent, 

Super High School is usually considered as the opportunity to realize the in-

tergenerational social mobility upwards. However, it could cause serious 

damage to the ecology of the high schools’ education within the region, ag-

gravating the exam-oriented education phenomenon in high school education, 

exacerbating the disadvantages of education inequity, etc., as a result, it has 

become a hot topic in all sectors of the society in recent years.  

Recently, a study published in Educational Research, based on the da-

ta from the freshmen in University A between 2007 and 2017, defined a Su-

per High School as a school whose admission rate for University A exceeds 

2 standard deviations of the provincial average, measuring the degree of su-

per high schools’ monopoly in each province by constructing an educational 

monopoly index, and evaluated the quality of upper secondary education by 

using the college entrance examination scores for sciences fixed by the first 

batch of universities enrolling senior high school students，and the college 

entrance examination scores for sciences fixed by Peking University and the 

University of Science and Technology of China. The researchers used the 

two-way fixed-effect model to analyze the status quo and the trends of the 

educational monopoly in China’s super high schools and based on this, probe 

into the effect of educational monopoly on the quality of upper secondary 

education in different provinces. The results show the following:  

 Over the past few years, 34% of the freshmen from University A aver-

agely come from super high schools, which indicating a serious educa-

tional monopoly phenomenon.  

 In the mainland, the data of 26 provinces shows the educational monopo-

ly at a moderate level or above; while in the western provinces, the situa-

tion of one certain high school always possesses the strongest status of 

university admission; as for those provinces with developed education 

W 

mailto:cbguoguoguo@pku.edu.cn


 

Vol.8, No.2, 2021 1144 

and economy or a large population, a situation of tripartite confrontation 

will emerge. 

 The educational monopoly indexes tend to rank oppositely to the college 

entrance examination scores for sciences fixed by the first batch of uni-

versities enrolling senior high school students, which indicates that the 

increased educational monopoly by super high schools will significantly 

reduce the educational quality of local upper secondary education. 

To break the educational monopoly, besides improving educational 

quality and promoting the balanced and high-quality development of regional 

education, it is strongly recommended to improving the educational quality 

of disadvantaged senior high schools, guiding junior high school students 

and their parents to choose senior high schools rationally, and accurately and 

effectively consummating the special policies for college admissions, on the 

condition of strictly prohibiting the cross-regional enrollment of super high 

schools. The suggestions are as follow: 

 Educational administrative departments must truly eliminate “schools in 

schools” and strictly prohibit public schools from enrolling students 

across cities and counties in the name of private schools. 

 Comprehensively evaluate the quality of high school education and pro-

mote the diversified development of high schools. 

 Consolidate the team construction of disadvantaged high school teachers 

to retain the good teachers and recruit new teachers. 

 Guide students and parents to choose schools rationally, and encourage 

parents to choose the most appropriate education for their children. 

 Further increase the number of students enrolled in various special pro-

grams to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of policies. 

 

Source: Educational Research, 2021; 42(4):37-51.