Chinese high school devises 'marks bank' for failing students to borrow from to raise grades

Failing your exams? An international high school in China has introduced a scheme allowing students to "borrow" marks to top up grades.

The "marks bank" -- devised by parents in the banking industry -- is being implemented as a trial in the Nanjing Number One Secondary School in eastern China, reports the South China Morning Post.

Students can borrow marks from the bank to make up for a failing grade, but have to repay their loans from marks obtained from subsequent exams, or from extra activities such as making public presentations or conducting lab experiments.

Like in a real-life bank, the system requires borrowers to provide a guarantor. Each person will even be assigned a credit rating, reports The Paper.

If a student fails to return their marks, their guarantor -- who has to be a fellow student -- can help clear their debt. Students who fail to clear their debt may also be blacklisted from borrowing in future.

The scheme appears to be taking off: out of the 49 students in the trial, 13 have applied for loans.

The idea also seems pretty well received on social media platform, Weibo.

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LiuChan02642 says: "Seems great! It's an incentive for those who aren't performing as well, so they can get the benefits they deserve. They should have other ways to earn marks, like doing good deeds for the class, being good at sports or winning essay competition. Make it as though you're cultivating students' abilities."

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1011YueTian says: "This is genius, creating a marks bank. It's great -- give students the chance to fail and learn, so that they can become clients of big banks."

Of course, some aren't as thrilled with the idea:

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UmbrellaFish6666 says: "The school's efforts to stop measuring ability by exams is worth encouraging, but in practice some students might have less respect for exams, since if you don't do as well once you can try again. You can't try again in life, so my advice is for students to study hard and let the marks bank close down."

Huang Kan, the school's director, said the purpose of examinations is to give students a way to test their skills, reflect and be better, adding: "Our objective is to look into new ways to evaluate performance; a holistic evaluation is better than having students' future determined by a single exam."