This weekend, high school seniors will take the most important exams of their lives, the national college entrance examinations, or gaokao for short. However, they may be among the last to take a gaokao exam devoted exclusively to English.

Earlier this year, news broke that education authorities plan to remove the English exam from the gaokao. Instead, schools will assess students' English over their three years in senior high school.

The change is a big deal. The gaokao, for those unfamiliar with it, effectively determines which university a student will be admitted to. For most students, the gaokao decides their future.

The gaokao is composed of four exams: one each for Chinese, English and mathematics, plus one comprehensive exam that covers the hard sciences and other subjects.

Although the local education authority hasn't confirmed its exact plan for removing the English exam from the gaokao, the initial news generated a lot of debate online.

Critics of change say that it will lower the status of English in China's education system. They are right, but that's not a bad thing.

After China opened itself to the rest of the world 35 years ago, English was elevated to the same level as the other major gaokao subjects. Since then, English has been regarded as a bridge to the rest of the world. And rightly so. But I question whether it deserves the same attention as Chinese and mathematics.

Parents and schools used to urge students to learn English well so they could get jobs in foreign companies, which offered higher salaries and greater cache. This is still the case, but I don't think it will last forever.

The recent slowdown in economic growth and increase in labor costs in China have pushed more foreign companies to consider leaving the Chinese mainland. With fewer positions available at fewer foreign companies, future Chinese university graduates will likely turn to the more promising domestic companies. They offer salaries as competitive as those offered by foreign companies. And regardless of whether one works at a domestic or foreign company, the employees who can earn the highest salaries are not those who can speak or write well in English, but those who have the most valuable skills.

Because of the gaokao, many students whose talents lie in other subjects, such as math and science, end up penalized for having mediocre English. It would be a shame to think that China's most promising students can't get into the best universities because they don't have much aptitude for the English language.

English can even be something of a distraction. Students believe that it is easier to score higher on the gaokao's English exam than on the Chinese exam, so they put more effort into improving their English, even if they intend to go into a field where the language will be of little use.

Removing English from the gaokao doesn't mean that studying English is no longer important. The language should, and will likely, be equal in status to the subjects of biology, chemistry, physics, history, economics and politics, which are tested in the gaokao's comprehensive exam. English will retain its status as the most important foreign language studied in Chinese schools.

But rather than having all students focus so heavily on English, it would be better to see fewer students become more focused on the language to act as translators for the rest of the population.

There is a lesson China can draw from Japan in this respect. After the World War II, the Japanese government realized the importance of collecting cutting-edge information from foreign countries, so it helped set up several institutes to collect and translate information about business and technology from other countries. According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, the organization's database of book translations, Japan now ranks the fourth in the world in the number of publications it translates and publishes.

It would suit China better to create a similar system that allows those with the highest aptitude and interest in English to serve as intermediaries to bring information published abroad to the public. By leaving English primarily to the English language professionals, it will allow others focus on the skills they are most suited to.