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Zhuangzhou - Xiao Wei's family is struggling to ensure their little girl will have more than a primary education, but in the villages of northwestern China, the odds are stacked against her.

It's children like 10-year-old Xiao Wei, one of dozens of kids tearing around a dusty village schoolyard, who are being left behind by China's economic boom as hidden costs, long distances to secondary schools and family needs mean a yawning gap in education opportunities for rural and urban children.

After years of focus on urban schools and higher education, basic schooling in rural areas has finally become a priority for a government trying to address a rural-urban wealth gap in China that is contributing to social unrest.

China's annual parliament session, which opens on March 5, is expected to pledge more funding for rural schools as the leadership under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao attempts to correct disparities between booming cities and the impoverished hinterland.

In earshot of local officials, teachers and students at the school in Zhuangzitou village repeat the government line that all children receive nine years of free compulsory schooling.

But when Xiao Wei is asked why her father went away to work as a migrant labourer, her answer is typical.

"He went away so me and my older brother could go to school," she explains.

Analysts say being in school is only half the battle for poor regions like hers that lack resources, infrastructure and the ability to attract top teachers.

"It's not only about access, but about the effectiveness and the efficiency of the education," said Fumi Sugeno, an education consultant for the non-governmental organisation Plan China.

"HUGE BURDEN"

Instructors at Xiao Wei's primary school, which has three teachers for its 78 students, say less than half will study past middle school, though some will go on to vocational colleges.

Village students in this part of rural Shaanxi, the arid, yellow-earth region that was the heart of ancient China, must travel to the township centre for junior middle school, and then farther afield to the county centre for high school.

The centralisation of secondary education is part of a government effort to use scarce resources in rural areas more effectively. But the upshot is that village students must board during the week, often at their own expense.

"The government may provide tuition, but families provide the boarding-school fee. This is a huge burden for them," said Gao Guangshen, the Rural Education Programme Manager at Plan China.

Even nominal fees can take a large chunk of salaries in a region where annual per capita income is about 1,000 yuan ($129).

Those in boarding schools also suffer from cramped conditions and poorer nutrition and hygiene. And some families are reluctant to send their children, especially daughters, so far from home.

Before 2005, the central government provided money in rural areas only to support teachers' salaries. The rest was to come from local authorities, which in some areas is so cash-strapped they already owe their teachers billions of yuan in back pay.

Under a five-year plan that began in 2006, the government pledged to raise spending on education to 4 percent of gross domestic product, but expenditures have yet to reach that level.

SPENDING BOOST

Gao says the government is likely to pledge an increase in spending on basic education during the parliament session, with a focus on the infrastructure of school buildings and boarding schools that lag their urban counterparts.

He talks of urban schools outfitted with computer labs, offering instruction in foreign languages and extra-curricular activities such as music and arts. In contrast, rural schools get by with barely enough teachers to cover the basics.

The few rural schools lucky enough to have a computer often find they have no staff trained to use the device and can't afford the electricity needed to run the computer.

Finding qualified teachers for the poor, remote areas is also a challenge.

Xiao Wei's teacher, surnamed Bai, lives on-site in a small room decorated with pictures of Mao, Lenin, Marx and Engels, and big enough for a desk, a coal stove and a bed.

She leaves her 9-year-old daughter in the township centre with the child's grandparents, a personal sacrifice that illustrate why the best quality teachers are often reluctant to work in poor areas.

"They spoil her and never discipline her," she says. "So when I go home on the weekends I try to impose some discipline and as a result, she doesn't like being with me."

After school, while her counterparts in the city are likely to be playing or doing their homework, Xiao Wei works in her family's fruit orchards.

Despite the obstacles, she hopes to get the kind of education that will allow her to move beyond the poverty of village life.

"I want to be a teacher," she says.