325 Science Education for China^s Elite Secondary Students; The Example of Chemistry Roger T. Cross Juergen Henze Ronald F. Price School of Education La Trobe University Bundoora, Victoria 3083 Australia Institute of Education Ruhr University 4630 Bochurn 1 Germany School of Education La Trobe University Bundoora, Victoria 3083 Australia Introduction The question ofscience education for China’s elite secondary school students is of interest because of the light it throws on a significant aspect of Chinese schooling. Science, worldwide, is by some heralded as the key to leisure and pleasure and by others labelled as the agent of war and planetary pollution. China, rededicated to modernization relying heavily on science and education, will clearly, if only because of population size, play a major role in deciding which of these future scenarios dominates the world stage. Senior secondary school in China today must still be regarded as an elite training and training provided in the schools designated as priority} is even more elite. Priority schools have existed at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of the Chinese school system over a long period (Price, 1970). Abolished during the Cultural Revolution, they were reinstated after 1976, though they continued to receive criticism. On average, 4% of the total number of general secondary schools were classified as priority schools in 1981. According to latest estimates by the World Bank priority schools "now comprise 1 % of primary and about 4% of secondary schools [with about] 5% of all students of the primary and secondary levels" (World Bank, 1986, pp. 10-11). But while the latter schools are given preferential treatment by the relevant administrative organs in funding, equipment, and in the selection of teachers and students (Henze, 1982)2, there is little information on the quality of the education provided. Two series of recent Chemistry textbooks and tertiary entrance examination questions were examined to throw light on this question. At the same time, the analysis shows something of the general nature of science education in Chinese schools. Science in the Secondary Curriculum The time devoted to science in the secondary school varies between the different types of such schools which presently exist. These are: 1. five-year secondary schools, comprising three years at the junior and two years at the senior level; 2. six-year secondary schools without differentiation into streams for the humanities and sciences (see Table 1); and 3. six-year secondary schools with specialization in the humanities and sciences in the last two years of the senior level (Zhongguo Jiaoyu Nianjian, 1984). Priority schools have generally been six-year secondary schools, especially in the cities. In contrast, the five-year curriculum has been prevalent in the rural areas and less economically developed cities and probably forms the dominant type of nonpriority schools in these areas. The time devoted to the sciences in the different types of schools is shown in Table 2. While this indicates the importance attached to science, which occupies an average of 18% of total time, it tells nothing of how that time is used. It is not the purpose to discuss the process of classroom instruction in this article but a few points may help to give an idea of the situation in which the textbooks described are used. Class sizes are very large, often ranging from 50 to even 70 students per class. Only in a few schools within each province is equipment comparable to what would be found in schools in advanced industrial countries, though in the best equipped schools it is excellent, both in quality and quantity. Probably for reasons of class size and availability of equipment, class experiment is confined to the few student experiments listed in the textbooks or may even be totally Volume 92(6), October 1992