Recommend but be open
It is good to grant university entrance without examination to high school graduates in the quake-hit areas who had outstanding performance in the relief work, but it should be transparent, say an article in Shijiazhuang Daily. The following is an excerpt:
Recently, a primary school in Wenchuan county recommended exam-exempted university admission for its principal's son, arousing widespread doubts about its fairness.
To begin with, the recommendation procedure is in doubt. The recommender is a primary school - according to relevant regulations, only high schools can make such recommendations. The fact that the head of the primary school is the referral's father made the thing more complicated.
Procedurally, the referrals' stories and deeds should be made public for the convenience of public supervision.
An independent party irrelevant to either education departments or high schools may take charge of auditing all referrals' conditions and exercise full transparency throughout the work.
Furthermore, local supervision authorities must engage in the whole process so that deceptions can be detected and punished in time.
If the recommendations are made with strictness and transparency, the doubts over them can be removed.
(China Daily 07/23/2008 page8)
