Millions of comments were posted on Chinese social media under the hashtag “Zhejiang may allow primary school students to leave homework unfinished after 9pm”, according to the China Daily.

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Most comments viewed by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were against the homework ban.

Many parents in China push their children to work harder at school knowing their future prospects would be determined by their result in the “gaokao” - a single test at high school that decides who enters university.

The Zhejiang government said the cause of the overburdened lives of school students was parental anxiety and social pressure. Families who “only caring for scores” had distorted the reason for schooling.

But Fuer Jiaya wrote on Weibo that parents would simply ignore the rule.

Western Wind wrote: “The more the government tries to reduce, the more burden the students will get, because the work will be added at off-campus training institutions and after-school classes.”
Weixi Xiaobin said: “In the real world, exam-oriented education is more important. It doesn’t mean it is better for the children, for raising better talent. But it is more important for today’s competitive, unfair, and score-oriented distorted social environment.”

Under the plan, Zhejiang schools would be told to strictly control the amount of homework issued by teachers, hold no classes before 8am, and forbid make up classes on weekends.

The Zhejiang proposal is entitled the “Burden reduction work implementation plan for primary and secondary school students”.

It comes in response to a national education department guideline issued in December that gave 30 measures to reduce the workload of school students.