We have high schools in the UK. We don't have junior or senior high school designations though. A lot of secondary schools are named .... High School.

Would be nice to get an update on whether or not they caught these bastards.

On that note, there's probably an international high school/secondary school for sale, super cheap if not free...

How many years will have to pass before decent state funded education is available to all? Countryside schools are hopelessly underfunded and in some areas nonexistent. In cities quality education is available to those who can pay inflated houses prices, various spurious fees, and in some cases outright bribes. And as can be seen from this case, which is far from unique, private schools are often poor quality and sometimes thinly disguised scams. This is to say nothing of the awful regime of rote learning, hours of homework etc. And the prize at the end of it all? An overpriced degree from an American ex-university-turned-certificate-printer whose professors don't even bother to teach classes.

@cloudtrapezer
So true.

@cloudtrapezer. Much of what you wrote above is also true for the US and UK. The obvious exceptions being the rote learning and hours of homework.

@trumpster

No I don't work at this school, or any school. I have an office inside the Kunming city education management building.

The parents apparently arrived there after they weren't happy with the district education ministry and went to the central ministry with a few red banners about how badly they felt they had been let down. Unfortunately for them they arrived late afternoon on after everyone had gone home and although there were some journalists there there people who may have been able to make a difference to the situation were all off work. Anyway, I believe an agreement was reached with their district education ministry and most of the students are now back in education. I could probably dig a little deeper should people be desperate for the news, although I believe most of the trouble was between the district local education ministry and the parents.

This all happened over Christmas while I was back home, so I'm just going off bits and bobs I heard from colleagues.

Tiger you're absolutely right about postcode stuff of course. And there's even people who change their religion to get their kids in school. But I also have a horrible feeling that impossible amounts of homework may be creeping in here and there under the banner of tigermumism etc.

@cloudtrapezer : "awful regime of rote learning, hours of homework etc" [...]

creeping in here and there under the banner of tigermumism"

Agreed, but I'd put this into context of the Chinese development stage, and go as far as cultural revolution. Chinese had a lot to catch up, and the parent/grandparent generations (quite correctly I argue) think that education is the way to go further.

Also I'd add that in first years of primary school, China's rote learning is praised even among many foreign education specialists. The youngest kids are served well by learning their alphabet and basic math that way, and independent thinking can come later.

Furthermore, to my understanding Chinese language cannot be taught (and learned) same way as many western languages, especially when it comes to reading and writing.

In this perspective even popular languages like English fall short in comparison to some other western languages that follow phonemic principle, like Spanish or Finnish.

A lot of nonsense is talked about the Cultural Revolution. In 1949 probably 70 percent of the population was illiterate. A great deal of that was due to written Chinese being a language of officials that had little to do with the spoken language until the great language reformers Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun etc began to write in the vernacular in the early 20th century. An alphabetic system called xin wenzi was developed fairly early on and developed into Pinyin. Unfortunately conservatism won out so Chinese kids are still forced to learn many thousands of what are essentially hieroglyphics. English spelling is awful but Chinese is literally in a class of its own unless you count Japanese which simply borrowed Chinese characters.