China’s educational reform has gathered pace in the past year as the country tries to liberalize curricula and provide fair opportunities for children of all places.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Standing Committee urged in late 2012 that educational reform should be accelerated. The Ministry of Education released a guideline on deepening educational reform in late January, 2013, which lists the targets and priorities of the reform. It said, for example, that the local governments should facilitate children of migrant farmers working in the cities to take middle school and college entrance exams locally, which was not allowed in the past.

One of the proposed reform measures is to reduce the weight of English and raise that of Chinese in college entrance exams. Meanwhile, students may be allowed to take the English exam twice or more a year, with the highest score taken as their final score. Some cities, such as Beijing, have released a timetable for the reform.

The government has also vowed to reduce interference in the enrollment process of the universities so that they can be more independent.

More support would also be given to private schools and colleges, according to the guideline.

More concrete implementations of the reform are expected to come out this year.