Purges may be what political junkies are talking about, but for Chinese families the big issue is homework. As children across the country returned to their classrooms in September, the education ministry has put forward plans to decrease the amount of pupils’ homework.

The ministry’s proposed guidelines, issued on August 22, ban written homework for every child up to the age of 12, and ban exams for children up to age nine. It also says that primary schools should organise more extra-curricular activities, such as visits to museums and places of cultural interest, and “cultivate pupils’ hands-on capabilities through handicrafts or farm work”.

Amid intense competition for university places and jobs, Chinese schoolchildren spend hours on homework at night. Pressure from early age is the cause of constant hand-wringing in the press. Yet the notion of lightening the burden has met with opposition from the people who complain most: parents. Last spring, Beijing attempted its own homework restrictions, but workloads crept back as insistent parents worried about their children falling behind.

The new proposals have drawn tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with older children saying they heard similar ideas of reform when they were at school ten years ago, but nothing changed. On his microblog Wang Xiaodong, co-author of a book called Unhappy China, suggests that the ministry stop micro-managing every element of basic education and leave the work to teachers and students. But that idea might lead to more homework, if current patterns hold. The biggest contribution education officials could make, wrote Wang, is “to give themselves a six-month holiday”.

The real problem is the underlying system. As one microblogger writes: “If the employment environment remains the same, if the gaokao (entrance exam) is not cancelled, if the top universities still enroll only the students with the highest score, it is impossible to reduce pupils’ burdens”. All these worries are compounded by corruption, inequity and disparity in teacher-training and compensation. Few believe such deep structural problems can be countered simply by a call for less homework.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)