'Decline' of top gaokao factory reveals limits of exam model

When the alarm rang at 5.30am, Mr Alan Wang and his same-grade cohort of some 4,000 students had exactly eight minutes to get up, make their dormitory beds and assemble on the field for their daily 1.6km morning run, which began at 5.38am.

- Michelle Ng

What followed was a gruelling 16-hour study day that rarely ended before 10pm. By 10.10pm, the dorm lights were out and everyone was expected to sleep.

That was Mr Wang's life, seven days a week, throughout his three years of studies, save for public holidays and monthly rest days, at Hengshui No. 2 High School in Hebei province starting from 2017 when he was 15 years old.

"The quilts had to be folded into a perfect rectangle and the sheets couldn't have a single wrinkle. We had 15 minutes to eat breakfast and dinner, and 20 minutes for lunch. All the other hours were spent studying," the 23-year-old, who graduated in 2020, told The Straits Times.

The objective of the ultra-strict scheduling: to do well enough in the gaokao, China's national university entrance examination, to secure a place at one of the nation's most prestigious universities - chief among them, Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The "Hengshui model", as it is famously known in China, returned to the spotlight in recent weeks after Chinese netizens discovered that Hengshui High School in Hebei province, the originator of the rigid regime, sent just 45 students to Tsinghua University and Peking University in 2025, far below its peak of 275 in 2019.

Netizen-generated charts circulating online showed that the number of Hengshui students admitted to the top two universities has been falling steadily since 2021.

The Hengshui model rose to national prominence in the 2000s and 2010s as the school consistently sent an unusually large number of students to China's top universities year after year, earning it a reputation as a gaokao "factory".

By 2017, Hengshui High School had set up 18 branches across the nation. Its success spawned imitators across the country as schools sought to replicate its exam results through similarly strict routines.