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Schools give migrant children a lesson in life

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-18 10:21

So even with a good family income, Yang Xiao's parents still had to send her back to her hometown in Anhui for school.

Yang, 16, was born and brought up in Shanghai. Dressed in the streetwise fashion of many city teenagers, Yang says she feels despised  there. "People look down on you when you don't speak their dialect," she says. She paid almost 2,000 yuan for tuition in a private secondary school in suburban Baoshan District, Shanghai.

Mostly situated on the urban fringes, the migrant schools are usually built on abandoned land or in deserted factories. But cities like Shanghai and Beijing saw the safety risks of these unauthorized schools and began to take control.

According to the Shanghai education commission, all migrant children in the city of school age will be enrolled in local public schools or government-subsidized private schools by 2010.

But with no local residency, Yang cannot take exams to go to high school there. She must go back to where her residency is and takes the exams there if she wants to continue her education.

Now a student in Fuyang No. 16 Secondary School, Yang can barely move in her classroom where 85 students are squeezed in. Desks are pushed nearly to the blackboard in the front of the classroom with little elbow room.

Each year, the school receives around 200 students who come back to take the high school entry exam. Because the school has limited classrooms and teachers, the extra students must be squeezed in, says Tang Haiping, the school principal.

Yang's class in Shanghai had only 38 students while her class in Anhui has 85. Class sizes are just one of the problems of rural education. Most schools in rural areas don't have enough teachers, and, if they have teaching equipment, it is usually out of date, says Tang.

Normal university students usually choose to apply for teaching jobs in the cities where the facilities are up-to-date and salaries good. Rural schools, especially in poor remote areas, have difficulties attracting teachers.

"The most difficult part is managing the left-behind students," says Tang. Because they are usually left with their grandparents and seldom communicate with their parents, it is hard to know what's on their minds. "We've had several cases of students disappeared to look for jobs in the city."

The central government has stepped up measures to address the education gap between rural and urban China. In 2006, the government revised the Compulsory Education Law and reiterated the obligation of city governments to provide education to migrant children.

The country's nine-year compulsory education system, which has long subsisted on government funding and comprises six-year free primary education and three-year secondary education, is provided for children aged 6 to 15.

Since 2007, the central government has exempted all students in rural areas from fees in nine-year compulsory education, for which it pays 300 to 500 yuan per student each year.

"Shanghai probably has the most favorable education policies for migrant children," says Liu Wenjie, of the Social Development Bureau, education department in Shanghai's Pudong district.

Pudong was selected as a pilot area, where 13 primary schools for migrant children were transformed into government-funded schools last year. Liu says the Pudong district government pays 2,000 yuan a year for each migrant student enrolled in local elementary, migrant or public schools.

Gao Huizi, a fifth grader in Pudong Dabieshan Migrant Elementary School, also born and brought up in Shanghai, has never known her hometown. Her mother, Wang Lan, lost her job in a clothing factory in Shanghai last year, but decided to stay.

The Pudong government pays Gao's tuition. "The living costs are higher than our hometown in Shandong, but we get by," says Wang. "It's okay to for us to struggle a bit if she can get a much better education here," she says. "I just want to make sure she gets a good education so she doesn't end up like us."

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