A new policy aimed at reducing student stress from schools was implemented recently in northwestern Shaanxi Province. 

The policy said primary schools in the province should not give homework to students in grades one and two and that students in other grades should spend no more than one hour on home assignment.  

The policy also says that students in grades one and two of junior high school should only spend at most 1 1/2 hours doing homework daily.

The same measures can also be seen in Shanghai and eastern Zhejiang Province.

Many experts consider these polices as successful practices in complying with international conventions. In fact, legislations in some European countries have banned homework for students under age 12.

The principal of Australian Melbourne school, Gordon Donaldson, who attended the first-ever International Schools Forum in Shanghai recently, said that in his school different quantities of home assignments are set to students of different grades.

"It guarantees students have plenty of time with their family or to do some thing they are interested in," the principal said.

But not all Chinese parents agree with the burden reduction project. Shanghai's Chen Shiqin, who has a 10-year-old daughter, always complained that his daughter's homework was not enough.

"Her home assignment is too simple and too little to make her competitive in society," he said.

Chen selected extra exercises and assigned his daughter to read some famous world classics such as "Notre-Dame de Paris." Every day, his daughter actually studied for three hours after school.

But 11-year-old Huang Yuwei appears to be lucky, though he has to play the piano for two hours daily after finishing his school work, which typically lasts about half an hour.

"My mother told me that it is hard to vie with others in society if I don't have any specialty," he explained.

Dong Xiuhua, of the Education and Science Study College, said that tradition makes Chinese pay more attention to education, causing them to worry about the actual effects of the new policies.

(China Daily April 15, 2005)