If i tell you, from the beginning of your kid's career, the middle school is cancelled, you go to high school, you're relieved, or you're more anxious
This year, according to the school-age population model, the number of students attending junior secondary schools in the country will reach its historical peak and then open an irreversible downward curve。
At the same time, the statement by the shanghai political consultative council member “the abolition of the mid-level examination is the inevitable trend” was painted on social platforms, and zhejiang zhejiang county has taken the lead in abolishing the middle-level examination。
With the students missing, the classroom is empty. Will the high school examination really disappear? Or will it change faces and continue to define the fate of children
Final demographic dividend
The field of education is undergoing dramatic changes。
As we enter this critical node in march 2026, we appear to be standing at an extremely rare “dwelling point” in the educational process in china。
(a) it is highly visible that the size of this year's junior high school students is at a historic peak, and that the school's head is growing and mirrors the legacy of the last generation of demographic dividends
On the other hand, the discourse about the “end of education” is beginning to go crazy in parents' circles, and since the number of children in the past has shrunk sharply, has the abolition of the middle and high examination entered a substantial countdown
It is ironic that such rhetoric, which sounds absurd, was the subject of serious discussions by a number of experts at the shanghai two meetings early this year。
This is far from intimidating public alarmism, but rather objective data that are occurring in cold cold。
Looking at the latest demographic map of the school-age population, 2026 was the highest number of junior high school students, but the picture was more like a “final dinner”, starting next year, and the number of applicants in the mid-level examination will show an alarming fall in slopes。
The number of newborns dating back to 2025, 9. 54 million in districts, is almost halved compared to 2016, which means that the supply and demand scales for high school degrees will be drastically reversed by 180 degrees after only 10 days。
In zhejiang province, the whistle of institutional reform has been sounded earlier。
Owing to the negative growth of the population for 27 consecutive years, in january 2026 the local authorities officially announced the abolition of the competitive examination function and the introduction of a policy of upward mobility for all students。
The term “segregation” has lost its physical sense of screening when only 325 students were enrolled in junior secondary schools in one district and only 36 in vocational secondary schools。
As the local education department said, "what are the tests for high school
This “passive cancellation” resulting from excess resources is penetrating from remote marginal areas to core urban circles。
Sounds like a good time to cancel the exam, and to have a happy education, but if the exam is really cancelled, what will you prove that your children are better qualified to sit on that scarce “focus high school” desk than others
If the picture of education in the past is described as “one-size-fits-all battle for a bridge”, the future educational ecology is about to be reduced to an awkward situation where “the bridge remains wide open and the horses are lost”。
This shift is not only a quantitative reduction, but also a subversive re-engineering of the pattern of allocation of available resources, forcing us to re-examine the legal basis on which the examination exists。
Hypocrisy
If the demographic structure is seen as an external incentive, the rigid logic of the existing appraisal mechanism is at the heart of the “elimination doctrine”。
For a long time, our system of mid- and senior-level examinations has been left in the mud of “false examinations” and students have been insinuated, day and night, in the tactics of the sea, repeatedly chewing mechanized knowledge points that are useless once they step out of the examination。
This backward talent assessment model, in 2026, thousands of years of artificial intelligence technology, shows an almost absurd sense of humor。
What is not a waste of educational resources? Today, when the cost of acquiring knowledge is close to zero, there is no point in simply choosing something more than memory。
The ministry of education's most recent governance initiatives have made a lot of noise. Since 2026, it has been determined to eliminate the various super-topics and mechanized encapsulations, and scientific examinations have had to increase the weight of experimental operations, while mathematical examinations require that they be rooted in real social life。
This sends a clear signal that those “town-makers” who have only the ability to remember the hard back will face a crisis of survival in the future selection ecology。
The bottom function of education is undergoing a transition from a cold “brain filter” to a warm “life culturer”。
However, groups advocating elimination often fail to see a key logic. As long as such quality education resources as qinghua and north china remain scarce, so long as the gap between “quality cake” and “general food rations” cannot be bridged, the flame of competition will never be extinguished。
What are we going to do to define superiority or inferiority if the future is no longer measured as a hero? This is the core proposition that most ordinary families feel cold about their backs。
From fraction to ability
Once standardized test scales have been abolished and the so-called “integrated evaluation system” has been fully introduced, will the bright science-creation projects become theatres where parents use their resources to help them? Will the entry for quality evaluation become a back door for human exchange and power search
At the national conference on education in 2026, the core tone conveyed at the decision-making level was one word: steady. The mid- and high-level examination system does not evaporate in a short period of time, but rather tends to evolve in a more moderate manner by replacing the vest。
In the next ten-year cycle, we may be able to witness the gradual incorporation of the high-school section into compulsory education and the gradual dilution of the selection of mid-level examinations。
But this does not mean that parents and students can “be leveled off” from here, but instead, the main battleground of competition has been moved from the original “squares” to a higher “capacity track”。
At a time when basic, repetitive work has been largely replaced by ai, what society desperately needs is “educating special forces” with creative thinking, capable of managing complex situations and resilient。
The future game of talent is no longer a test of who can hold the sea longer, but of who can lead the way to birth in the unknown wilderness。
I thought..
The aim of this transformation, which has swept the country, is not to free young people completely from the constraints of the examinations, but to try to ensure, through the evaluation system, that every independent individual can find the dignity and worth that he or she deserves in a system of coordinates that matches his or her talents。
The inner volume of education, by its very nature, is not a product of population expansion, but rather a result of the excessive narrowness of the rise。
It is not the examination itself that worries the champion of the middle and high examination system, but the light behind it that changes fate; the reformers are not looking for the elimination of the ruler, but for every snowflake to find its place。
There are more and more empty seats in the classroom, but the path to the future has never been reduced, except that we are still in this game of “equity” and “science” to find the answer that keeps every child alive。
When the bell resounds in 2026, it is perhaps not the end of a particular examination, but the effort and skill that really fit together to be the last card of every ordinary young man to break the balance of destiny。
