Here is another View from the Media that was posted several weeks ago on China Development Brief's website that highlights the plight of China's migrant children.
Amanda Brown-Inz
CDB (English) Associate Director
In recent months, a considerable amount of media attention has focused
on the plight of migrant workers' children seeking to attend public high
school and take the college entrance exam (gaokao) in a location outside of their legal residency (hukou[1]).
This issue highlights the tensions arising from China's rapid
urbanization, and the stress that new geographic mobility places on the hukou system.
There are reportedly more than 400,000 migrant workers' children living
in Beijing alone, approximately 16 million throughout the country, and
these communities have become increasingly vocal about their right to
attend public high school and test for university in their place of
residence. In urban metropoles such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou,
the issue has been particularly heated, as universities maintain higher
placement quotas for these in-demand locations, and many claim that
urban families hope to maintain a monopoly on their privilege by
excluding the children of migrant workers from gaokao competition.
The first public debate on this issue centered around Zhan Haite, the
15-year-old daughter of a migrant businessman in Shanghai, whose plea
for policy reform was featured in an op-ed
in the state-owned newspaper China Daily. More recently, the debate in
Beijing focused on a controversial plan issued in December of 2012 that
would allow migrant workers' children to attend vocational colleges in
the capital beginning in 2013, and allow them to matriculate at
universities after graduating from vocational colleges beginning in
2014.
The plan would allow policy makers to kill two birds with one stone, skirting the gaokao
issue and acquiring pupils for the city's unpopular (and reportedly
subpar) vocational colleges. Following a public outcry, however, the
Beijing Municipal Commission of Education announced on January 21 that it would reconsider this plan and develop a new action plan to allow migrant youths in Beijing to take the gaokao.
This action plan will include creating a management regulation for
migrant workers' schools and a special fund to guarantee that migrant
children receive compulsory education in Beijing.
In the meantime, the Beijing Bureau of Education has turned its
attention to the unregistered schools which provide education to migrant
children. While migrant children at the junior high school level and
below are technically entitled to attend Beijing public schools,
exorbitant entrance fees and weak educational backgrounds often prevent
their enrollment. Thus, private schools for migrant children have sprung
up in recent years, attempting to address the unique needs and
situation of the children of migrant workers.
Despite the benefits of (and obvious need for) these types of schools,
Beijing education authorities have frequently been quite hostile to
their operations. Migrant children's schools face a constant battle
against government closure efforts, and must often rely on their
relationships or on appeals to the media to keep their doors open.
Authorities argue, however, that many of these schools are not up to
national standards, lacking professional teachers and proper curricula,
and thus should not be allowed to operate. In January, Chaoyang
authorities shut down 18 private schools.
More interesting initiatives related to the development and
professionalization of migrant children's schools have emerged from the
private sector. Over the last couple of years, for instance, the Narada
Foundation (南都基金会) has funded a New Citizens Program (新公民), which
develops and professionalizes already extant migrant children's schools.
The Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center has also recently announced the development of its Beijing Migrant Children's Education Plan,
which will unite a number of NGOs (including New Citizens) to form the
Beijing Migrant Children's Care Alliance, carrying out
Training-of-Trainers and other programs.
The cause of gaokao qualification for the children of migrant workers is one in a growing chorus of critiques of the hukou
registration system. The challenge for the government, which is
reticent to dismantle the system, lies in testing how many exceptions
and tweaks may be made to its infrastructure in response to social
welfare concerns before it snaps. While the halting of the hukou system
is far from certain, its navigation will hold a crucial place in the
struggle for social welfare reform in upcoming years.
[1]
Hukou is the Chinese term for the household registration system which
determines every Chinese citizen's legal residency. In this system every
Chinese citizen registers in the city or town or township where they
reside. Benefits such as medical insurance and access to public schools
are tied to one's hukou and are not transferable. Thus, if someone moves
to another city, such as Beijing, they generally do not receive those
same benefits in their new place of residence, unless they are able to
change their hukou. Getting your hukou transferred to a major city such
as Beijing or Shanghai, however, is very difficult. As a result, the
large majority of “migrants” in China's major cities lack the same
status as hukou holders in those cities.
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