Why Are Biology and Geography Dropped from China’s High‑School Entrance Exam? A Structured Analysis

Background

Starting around 2027, provinces such as Jilin, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Hunan announced that biology and geography will no longer count toward the total score of the senior high school entrance exam (zhongkao). The decision sparked heated online debate, with opinions ranging from approval to concern.

Framework for Subject "Retention Value"

The author proposes a four‑dimensional model to quantify a subject’s value for the exam:

Knowledge Utility (0–10) : breadth of knowledge relevance to long‑term development and daily life.

Discriminative Power (0–10) : ability of the exam to differentiate students of varying abilities.

Timeliness (0–10) : freshness of the content at the time of the exam and its alignment with high‑school curricula.

Learning Cost (1–10) : total burden of class hours, memorization load, and test‑preparation pressure (minimum 1 to avoid division by zero).

A weight coefficient is applied (the exact value is omitted for brevity) to combine these dimensions into a single score.

Scoring and Calculation

Using subjective scores (the author’s own judgments), each subject receives a composite value. Representative results are:

Mathematics: 1.13

Chinese: 1.16

English: 1.00

Physics: 1.00

Chemistry: 1.00

History: 1.12

Biology: 0.85

Geography: 0.85

Biology and geography score the lowest mainly because their timeliness rating is low.

Timeliness Mechanism

In most provinces, biology and geography are taught and examined in the second year of junior high (grade 8), leaving roughly a one‑year gap before the final exam in grade 9. During that year, students rarely revisit the material, leading to knowledge decay. By contrast, core subjects such as math, Chinese, English, physics, and chemistry continue to be reinforced up to the exam, keeping the forgetting window near zero.

The author models this decay with a simple exponential function: Retention = e^(-k·Δt), where Δt is the time since the last systematic instruction and k is a decay rate (illustrative value only). Applying the same initial mastery level, biology and geography retain about 74 % of their knowledge compared with the core subjects by exam time.

Interpretation of the Results

Within the specific context of the high‑school entrance exam, biology and geography are deemed low‑ROI because their timeliness is poor, not because the knowledge itself lacks value. The subjects still provide essential understanding of the human body, climate, and geography, but the exam format reduces them to memorisation tasks that do not reflect deeper disciplinary thinking.

Impact on Student Anxiety

Removing the two subjects does not eliminate exam‑related anxiety; it merely shifts competitive pressure onto the remaining core subjects. Since the total number of admission slots stays constant, each remaining subject’s marginal impact on ranking increases, potentially driving more tutoring demand for math, Chinese, English, physics, and chemistry.

Potential Risks and Caveats

If the removal is not accompanied by adjustments in teaching quality monitoring or compulsory assessments, the subjects could gradually be neglected in instruction, leading to a long‑term decline in basic scientific and geographic literacy.

All parameters in the model are author‑defined and serve only to illustrate the analytical framework; different assumptions will produce different rankings.