Students in Huai'an, East China's Jiangsu Province prepare for the Gaokao, or national college entrance examinations, on Friday. The exams will be held 24 days later. A total of 10.71 million students applied for this year's exams.Photo: IC

Those schools with confirmed COVID-19 cases will not hold China's upcoming national college entrance examinations, also known as the Gaokao examination, scheduled between July 7 and 8, China's Ministry of Education (MOE) said as they were introducing the country's Gaokao pandemic prevention and control measures at a press conference held on Friday.

In fact, student candidates and examination supervisors are required to monitor their health for at least 14 days prior to the examination, and record their body temperature daily, China's Center of Disease Control said.

The Gaokao examination in 2020 is the first national level education examination of the year, and will also be the largest organized group activity since the beginning of the pandemic, China's MOE added. A total of 10.71 million students will sit the Gaokao, which is an increase of 400,000 compared with last year.

There will be more than 7,000 examination sites and 400,000 examination rooms used nationwide this year. A total of 945,000 test staff, including invigilators, will serve the event, according to the authority.

To reduce the possibility of onsite virus transmission, the authority asked all examination sites to carry out a comprehensive disinfection before the test starts, including the onsite air conditioners, public passages, door knobs, desks, chairs, and dormitories.

All Gaokao attendees will be required to measure body temperature before they enter the examination site, and attendees from medium- and high-risk areas as well as all test personnel will be required to wear face masks throughout the duration of the tests, with those attendees from low-risk areas being allowed to decide whether they want to wear face masks. 

One spare examination room will be set up for every 10 "ordinary" examination rooms, which will be used for candidates who show any signs of fever, coughing, and other respiratory symptoms during the test. If any candidates show symptoms during the two-day test, they will be quickly transferred to this room, and offered extra time lost during this period. 

The health departments, disease control agencies, and medical institutions will be responsible for providing sufficient advice to the country's education departments, in regard to evaluating their students or colleagues' symptoms, so as to decide whether they can continue the test or not.

China's Gaokao, often seen as a life-changing opportunity, especially for students from poor families, is normally held on June 7 and 8 every year; however, it was postponed for one month due to the coronavirus pandemic. This year, the structure of the test paper, number of questions, and level of difficulty will maintain relatively the same as that in previous years, Sun Haibo, director of the education center of MOE said.