In early August, in a conference room of the Education Bureau of Jieshou City, Anhui Province, a "allocation lottery" related to the middle school entrance examination was conducted in an orderly manner under the supervision of notarization. With the computer operator balancing the allocation data according to "ABBA", 2640 candidates (excluding special talents) who have been admitted by the joint enrollment of Jieshou No.1 Middle School and Jieshou Middle School have been allocated to the two middle schools. As a measure to ensure fair opportunities for students from weak schools, cool down the "peak picking fever" and "school selection fever", and alleviate anxiety about further education, the quota based admission and balanced allocation practices in various regions' middle school entrance examinations have attracted widespread attention from parents and students. Since the issuance of the "Opinions on Deepening Education and Teaching Reform and Comprehensively Improving the Quality of Compulsory Education" by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council in 2019, which proposed to implement the policy of allocating high-quality high school enrollment quotas to junior high schools, the central and Ministry of Education documents have repeatedly mentioned increasing the proportion of "quota to school" and implementing balanced enrollment. In October this year, the Ministry of Education issued the "Ten Measures to Further Strengthen the Mental Health Work of Primary and Secondary School Students", proposing to orderly promote the reform of the middle school entrance examination, accelerate the expansion of enrollment indicators for high-quality high schools, and carry out pilot programs for balanced allocation of enrollment. Will the implementation of the 'indicators on campus' policy achieve the expected results and create new imbalances? How to further optimize the scope of implementation, recruitment conditions, and evaluation of further education, and help shift from "education points" to "education"? The reporter conducted an interview. Competition has narrowed down to within the school, cooling down the "school choice fever". Hunan high school student Du Anlin experienced significant fluctuations in his grades during the preparation stage of junior high school. Fortunately, as an indicator student, he secured his "admission ticket" in advance and enrolled in Changsha Lushan International Experimental School. Today, he has regained his form and entered the school's excellence class for learning. Recalling the past, he sighed and said, "Choosing to be a quota student is like buying 'insurance' for the middle school entrance examination. This flexible choice made me particularly stable in the final sprint stage." Similarly, Du Anlin's younger students also benefited from the quota student policy. In April of this year, the Education Bureau of Changsha City announced the "2025 Changsha City Urban High School Target Student Plan Allocation Plan", in which each junior high school in the city is allocated three types of high-quality high school target student plans in principle. According to statistics, there are a total of 11763 target student plans in the urban area of Changsha, which is 1993 more than last year, an increase of about 20.4%. In Haidong, Qinghai, the allocation of enrollment quotas for high-quality ordinary high schools to all junior high schools in the jurisdiction and the recruitment of candidates based on the allocated enrollment quotas for junior high schools are called "balanced students". It is reported that Haidong No.1 Middle School has implemented a balanced student (formerly quota student) enrollment plan since 2021, with a balanced student ratio of 50% of the school's enrollment plan. The plan is to distribute the number of applicants according to the graduation grade of junior high schools. Unlike the unified enrollment, balanced students are only allowed to fill in the form of local junior high school graduates with registered residence who have actually studied for three years in the same junior high school in the same place where they applied for the examination and whose junior high school registration has always been in the school. The implementation of the balanced enrollment policy aims to provide opportunities for students in junior high schools, especially rural junior high schools and weak junior high schools in urban areas, to enjoy high-quality general high school education resources and promote educational equity. ”The relevant person in charge of the Education Bureau of the city explained that all candidates applying for the same regular high school unified enrollment will have the same admission score line, while balanced students applying for the same high-quality regular high school will have different admission score lines for different junior high schools, so the competition faced by balanced students is relatively small. Zhang Jiayong, a researcher and deputy director of the China Academy of Educational Sciences, told reporters that the policy of separately allocating school quotas to schools (target students, balanced students) is an important measure of the reform of the middle school entrance examination. The purpose is to promote the balanced development of compulsory education and broaden the channels for students from weak schools to receive high-quality high school education. The focus of the policy is on high school enrollment, but the actual goal is to promote students from primary to junior high school. "Professor Shen Jiliang from the China Institute of Education and Social Development at Beijing Normal University analyzed that parents and students who choose junior high schools that implement quota enrollment at their doorstep will have the opportunity to enter key high schools as quota students as long as they rank high on campus. This measure not only reduces the impulse to choose schools from" primary to junior high school ", but also helps weak junior high schools attract some excellent students, making the student population of junior high schools more balanced and optimizing the educational ecology. Setting a "bottom line" for scores, balancing fair opportunities and quality of education. Although this policy strives to balance the interests of all candidates, the reporter learned during the interview that some parents also have doubts about the implementation process: due to the allocation of more than 50% of quota students, the quota for excellent high school entrance examination has been reduced accordingly. Will it bring new problems? Will some weak schools become complacent and weaken their motivation to improve their educational and teaching levels? At the beginning of policy implementation, some regions found that the academic foundation of some indicator students was relatively weak, making it difficult to keep up with the teaching progress, which was not conducive to coordinating student needs and organizing teaching. Further optimization measures were needed to achieve a balance between educational equity and talent cultivation quality. ”Shen Jiliang stated. According to Zhang Jiayong's observation, some regions have set a minimum admission score line for high-quality regular high schools, and only students who meet the score line are eligible to apply; Some regions have made optimization adjustments to the ratio of school quotas to campus, without pursuing excessively high ratios; In some regions, high-quality junior high schools are also included in the quota for enrollment in schools, allowing some "excellent schools" to participate in the competition for enrollment in schools. According to the regulations of Jilin City, Jilin Province, the "quota students" will be ranked within junior high schools. Based on their first choice, they will be admitted according to their scores, with a maximum reduction of 50 points. They will be selected based on their academic performance until the quota is reached; The quota is determined by the city and county (city) education bureaus based on the number of applicants for the middle school entrance examination and the provincial key high school enrollment plan. While appropriately tilting towards rural middle schools and non hot spot middle schools in cities, it ensures that each middle school can be allocated the corresponding quota. The Beijing 2025 high school entrance examination enrollment policy also stipulates that quota allocation enrollment includes "campus quota to campus" and "city level overall planning". Among them, campus quota to campus selection is adopted, and admission is based on candidates' preferences and grades. The total score of candidates must reach 430 points, and the comprehensive quality evaluation must reach level B. Changsha City has established a "minimum control line for quota students", which will be announced after the release of the middle school entrance examination results. Even if the quota student's preferences are filled in, those whose scores do not meet the minimum control line cannot be admitted. Weifang, Shandong Province is strictly implementing the requirement of no less than 60% of students arriving at school, while strengthening the "county within county recruitment". The city is divided into 9 enrollment areas and cross regional enrollment is not allowed. According to Zhang Jiayong's analysis, from a long-term trend perspective, "school quota to school" is only a phased policy in promoting the balanced development of compulsory education. When the goal of high-quality and balanced compulsory education is ultimately achieved and the corresponding reform of middle school entrance examination and enrollment is timely followed up, this policy will eventually lose its necessity. At present, the proportion of target students is not necessarily better. It is necessary to comprehensively consider multiple factors such as the eligibility criteria for selecting high-quality ordinary high schools, the restrictions on weak junior high schools, the proportion of school quotas on campus, and the qualifications of school quotas on campus students, to ensure that high-quality ordinary high schools are not diluted, the quality of weak junior high schools is improved, and students with school quotas on campus are not harmed. The discussion on the policy of target enrollment is actually a debate around the two educational values of 'compensation' and 'selection of excellence'. ”Wang Shiyue, Deputy Director and Associate Professor of the Institute of Higher Education at the Education Research Institute of Nanjing University, believes that "more attention should be given to 'indicator students' in a systematic manner, so that they can receive more support and assistance after entering high school, and turn pressure into learning motivation; and an incentive environment consistent with the value of educational equity should be created, and policies aimed at compensating for educational opportunities such as teacher rotation should be implemented together." Before optimizing evaluation and achieving comprehensive, personalized, and diversified recruitment, Shanghai and Chengdu issued pilot documents for the "12 year long education system", and some parents believed that this was a policy signal to dilute the middle school entrance examination. The education administrative departments of the two places quickly clarified that this is a reform of talent cultivation mode, and the proportion of pilot schools and students is not high, which will not affect the overall enrollment of local middle school entrance examination. From the perspective of student development, high school education is an important stage where the development path of teenagers begins to diverge after completing compulsory education. Therefore, the orientation of high school education in China is diversified and characteristic development, which puts forward new requirements for the reform of talent cultivation mode. The reforms in Shanghai and Chengdu are a good start. ”Zhang Jiayong believes that the current high school education penetration rate is already very high, but matching students to suitable high schools still requires examination evaluation as a basis. "The reform of high school recruitment should first move towards a comprehensive, personalized, and diversified direction, no longer only based on written exams, scores, or unified exams, but also open up more channels for further education, match every student to a suitable high school, and achieve high-quality development of high school education and healthy growth of students. When the development paths of each child are no longer similar, there will be no homogeneous competition, and the anxiety of further education will naturally dissipate. 'Education' will eventually replace 'education scores'." "To alleviate the anxiety of further education, in the near future, in addition to implementing policies such as target students, it is also necessary to expand the number of school places in a targeted manner and solve the problem of' having access to education '. The problem. In the long run, we need to break the 'homogenization' pattern of high school development and promote diversified development in high schools. ”Shen Jiliang said, "While ensuring that the national curriculum is fully open, high schools need to form and highlight their own educational characteristics, fully play the role of elective courses, and enrich the curriculum supply according to the concept of 'ability based stratification and interest based classification'. One school can have one characteristic, or one school can have multiple characteristics, so that 'choosing high schools' is no longer about' competing for admission lines', but about 'competing for characteristics', and everyone can take what they need Shen Jiliang also stated that in addition to "indicators arriving at the school", there are still many areas for high school enrollment in terms of test question design and recruitment standards: "The high school entrance examination should focus on retesting students' common foundation, and should not emphasize difficulty, avoid excessive differentiation, and pay attention to testing practical problem-solving abilities rather than memorizing knowledge points. Currently, many students have a" growth portfolio "since elementary school, and the application of comprehensive quality evaluation in recruitment can be increased. The role of artificial intelligence technology can be leveraged to try to solve problems such as subjective or potentially inaccurate comprehensive quality evaluation. In short, in the future, high school enrollment will bid farewell to the single match between scores and candidates, and become a" two-way choice "based on students' own interests, strengths, potentials, and development plans, helping students develop comprehensively. Individually assertive." (New Press)