High school seniors from Tianquan county in Yaan, Sichuan, walk onto their new campus at Chengdu Normal University in Chengdu on April 24. The county's 1,019 students, affected by the magnitude-7 Lushan earthquake, will attend the national college entrance examination next month. Wang Ruobing / for china daily

A PRIVATE PRIMARY SCHOOL in Shanghai has been criticized by the municipal education authorities for asking the parents of kids attending interviews to answer questionnaires and tests. Thepaper.cn comments:

The Shanghai Education Bureau has criticized the school and reduced its enrollment quota next year as a punishment.

But it is necessary for the authorities to halt this improper practice, which is not uncommon. It is mainly a characteristic of prestigious schools, which make their pupils' family backgrounds an important factor influencing their chances of being admitted.

If unchecked, children from wealthy and powerful families will gain a tremendous advantage in the competition for places in good schools over their poorer counterparts.

But if the IQ, education and employment information of not only the parents, but even the grandparents, become criteria for schools when enrolling students, the children from poor families have already lost at the starting line.

Education is undoubtedly the best way for children from the bottom of society to climb up the social ladder, and the government must strive to make it as fair as possible.

In Shanghai, the quality of public primary schools is generally lower than that of private schools. That's an important reason why some prestigious private schools have the audacity to include the children's parents on their exam rosters.

The government must increase its inputs into public schools to ensure they provide the ballast for social fairness and justice.