Coronavirus in China: students left in limbo as zero-Covid hits US placement exam
- Annual AP Exams effectively cancelled for eight host cities, including major education hubs Shanghai and Beijing
- Exam authority College Board cites ‘scale and uncertainty of the situation in China’
The announcement from the College Board, an American non-profit organisation which administers the AP exams for postsecondary education in the US, means this year’s test in eight mainland cities – including Beijing and Shanghai – will not be held due to Covid-19 curbs.
“Widespread Covid restrictions will prevent some locations from testing in May, and we are not able to provide make-up options beyond May given the scale and uncertainty of the situation in China,” the organisation said in a statement on its website on Friday.
China’s private education sector has boomed in the past decade on strong demand from middle-class families for colleges in the West, especially the US and Britain.
However, private bilingual schools have in recent years been hit by a slew of reforms, with education authorities requiring students to use the Chinese textbooks adopted by public schools, and to take compulsory exams – known as the zhong kao – for admission to public senior high school.
Thousands of mainland Chinese students sit the AP exams annually, mostly 11th-graders hoping to improve their chances of attending college in the West.
