The winter vacation officially ends next Monday, but for a group of junior high students facing a major exam, the holidays were already over last week. While other people relaxed and had fun during the Chinese New Year, they spent nine hours a day studying in a cram school, hoping that their hard work will pay off in a few months.

With the lunch break ending, these third year middle school students are participating in a special cram school camp over the Lunar New Year holiday.

One by one they are all bleary-eyed as they have been studying for 5 straight days.

They are doing stretching exercises to help them recover with some encouragement being shouted out, their drowsiness totally disappears.

This cram school has operated this Lunar New Year camp for 16 consecutive years, and this year they enrolled 136 students.

From the first day of Lunar New Year till the fifth day, they started classes at 8AM and continued till 5PM.

They each lose 3 points if they are late in the morning, and if they doze off during self-study periods they also lose 3-points, and if they lose 30 points they will fail.

So far, on the fifth day, no one failed.

Those participating in this cram school camp mostly come from Taipei, New Taipei City, and Keelung as they hope to prepare for entrance exams.

Each of these children say they are tired, but it's definitely worth it.