Urban and rural students : A qualitative study of the urban-rural divide among graduates from a “super high school” in China

Abstract: Derived from the education division of China, this study emphasizes the urban-rural divide in students’ results of the NCEE (National College Entrance Examination). The NCEE is the official selection examination for higher education and the final examination of high school in Mainland China. As the major criterion in higher education selection, the divide can be found in the NCEE results of urban and rural students in which urban students are able to get higher grades than rural students. Aiming to discover the urban-rural divide in the NCEE results from how students prepare the NCEE in their high schools, this study uses a case of graduates of a “super high school” as an example. A “super high school” is a type of high school where achieving top performances of the NCEE is the goal of all pedagogic activities. Both urban and rural students can be enrolled in a “super high school”. The “super high schools” are common in overpopulated areas of China. In one way, the differences of urban and rural students in their high school studies can be perceived within a “super high school”; furthermore, the certain pedagogical activities of a “super high school” may influence students’ behaviours and trigger the urban-rural divide. Based on the theoretical frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital, his theory of symbolic violence, and Erving Goffman’s theory of total institution, ten high school graduates as well as three of their high school teachers are interviewed in this study. The analysis focuses on three aspects, the differences between urban and rural students in terms of their educational resources and practices in high school, their behaviours in a “super high school”, and their attitudes towards the NCEE system. In summary, this study finds out that firstly, urban parents have more economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital than rural parents and they can offer more educational resources to their children in high school. Secondly, urban students are not very supportive of the “super high school” model but they can get more help from their teachers, while rural students strongly follow the “super high school” model but they don’t often get more help from their teachers. Last but not least, rural students attach great importance to the NCEE and their NCEE results, but urban students do not always think so.