Reform can reduce study burden of pupils

Winter vacation has become the third semester for students of primary and middle schools in cities. A Chinese Society of Education survey shows Chinese parents have invested more than 800 billion yuan ($116.5 billion) in primary and middle school students' extracurricular classes. And many people believe students are overburdened by studies during vacations because of parents who make irrational choices and institutions that offer extracurricular classes only to make profits.

But blaming only parents and "special" institutions for the current situation, without reforming the education sector, will not alleviate students' study burden.

Forcing children to attend many extracurricular classes may not be good for their healthy development. But since the distribution of educational resources is highly unbalanced in China with key primary and middle schools accounting for a bulk of the resources, parents who can afford to pay have no choice but to send their children to extracurricular classes fearing that they may not be able to get admission to key primary and middle schools, and eventually fail to enroll in colleges.