Enrollment in English recovers

Rumors that language would be dropped from gaokao proved to be unfounded

English training classes from K-12 levels seem to have recovered from shrinking numbers last year, following plans to reform the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, educators said.

"Last year's draft policy on reforming the gaokao might have seemed to be taking English out of the exam, and some parents and students took that to mean that the language was no longer important, which caused a slight drop in our enrollment," said Lyu Tengfei, director of the high school English training department at Xueersi, a Beijing training organization under the Tomorrow Advancing Life Education Group.