Unified National College Entrance Exam Provincial Proposition

With the development of higher education, the reform of national matriculation test (NMT) in China has been intensified. The decentralization of NMT has broken the traditional framework characterized by administering NMT for all provinces or municipalities, thus signifying a new historical phase in NMT reform. Provinces or municipalities, authorized to administer NMT, have made profound explorations and innovations in such areas as NMT paper designing, organization and administration after learning from Beijing and Shanghai, pioneers in the experiment of NMT administration.The decentralization of NMT has demonstrated distinct characteristics. So far as the reform of the test design is concerned, the relevant provinces or municipalities have carried out effective innovations in both the form and content of NMT through inheriting the advantages of the traditional centralized test model in combination with the real situations of their own educational development; they have manifested their ingenuity in not only the change in the approach to the test, the adjustment of testing items and the structure of the test paper, but also the expansion of potential materials for the test and the design of various new items. Moreover, they have gradually applied advanced measuring theories and technologies to the control of the test writing quality and effectively controlled possible factors that may influence the test error, so as to ensure the validity and reliability, and the quality of the test paper through raising the discrimination and the rational design and regulation of the difficulty of the test paper. As regards the organization and administration of NMT decentralization, provinces or municipalities concerned have begun to attach much attention to the process of test designing, securing the scientification and standardization of the test, the work of selecting and training specialized secretaries, and rationally constructing test writing teams of high quality, so as to guarantee the quality and sustainable development of the decentralization of NMT.The decentralization of NMT, however, has also faced some problems and difficulties on its way of steady exploration and practice. In the form and content of the test paper, further research is needed in the realization of testing cross-discipline knowledge and the implementation of the approach of testing candidates' capability; and in the control of the test paper quality, there exist problems in terms of how to strengthen test writing technologies, the exploration and application of the data gathered from the analysis of the test paper quality, and the maintenance of the difficulty; in organization and administration, it takes risks in the maintenance of security and secrecy, and some provinces and municipalities lack sufficient management expertise.The implementation of the new curriculum reform in high schools has made new demands for NMT, whose decentralization is now facing unprecedented challenges in content, form, technology and supplies. As an important part of the reform of NMT, measures of improvement sought for the decentralization of NMT, under the background of the implementation of the new curriculum reform in high schools, require an all-round perspective based on the reform of NMT. The design of rational plans for the NMT and the formulation of applicable guarantee measures make it possible to find policy support and innovative concept guide for the reform of the decentralization of NMT.