Who Becomes Elite? School Hierarchies and Educational Futures in China

Dr Siyu Li, Associate Professor, Aix-Marseille University

Abstract

How do students come to see themselves as likely or unlikely to enter elite higher education before university admission actually takes place? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in four Chinese secondary schools occupying very different positions in the educational hierarchy, this paper examines how institutional location shapes students’ expectations of their future. Focusing on school hierarchies, everyday ranking practices, teacher judgments, and students’ understandings of their own educational trajectories, I show how distinctions between more and less “promising” futures are gradually produced well before the national college entrance examination. The paper argues that elite formation is not simply an outcome of examination performance, but an ongoing social process through which students learn to locate themselves within an unequal educational order.

Bio

Siyu Li is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Aix-Marseille University and a member of the Institut de Recherches Asiatiques (IrAsia). Trained as a sociologist, her research focuses on education, social stratification, quantification, and contemporary China. Her current work examines how examinations, school hierarchies, and family strategies shape educational trajectories and social inequalities. She is also developing a book project based on ethnographic research on the Chinese national college entrance examination, the gaokao.

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