Jiang Ping, a 17-year-old student in China, has sparked debate on mathematics and education after she was shortlisted for the 2024 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition finals.
Ranking 12th out of a total of 801 finalists, Jiang is the only female in the top 30 on the list released by DAMO Academy, a research and development branch of Alibaba Group. She is also the first secondary vocational school student to enter the finals since the competition was launched in 2018.
Jiang is currently studying fashion design at Jiangsu Lianshui Secondary Vocational School. In China, secondary vocational schools are usually attended by middle school graduates with lower scores on the high school enrollment examination, leading to stigma being attached to schools that train technicians and skilled workers.
Jiang’s ranking, announced last week, has garnered nationwide attention as she outperformed other finalists who come from prestigious schools such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University.
Some wonder why a student so gifted in math chose to study in a secondary vocational school, while others reflect on the current education system’s drawbacks in developing students’ interests and talents. Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said more chances should be created for students who excel in a particular subject, instead of evaluating all talents with a total score.
“Jiang Ping scored 621 on the high school enrollment examination in 2022, which was higher than the admission threshold of high schools in Lianshui County,” said Wang Wenlin, Party secretary of the Jiangsu Lianshui Secondary Vocational School.
Wang added that Jiang chose to study at the school because she was interested in its fashion design major, and her elder sister and two best friends also study at the school.