Practices and Barriers to Promoting Educational Equity for Migrant Children in China from the Perspective of a Local Government

Abstract

Researchers have sought perspectives from students, parents, teachers, and school administrators to investigate the educational status of migrant children. This study sheds new light on the same topic by adopting the perspectives of local government officials. Specifically, it investigates the practices advocated by local governments to improve the educational equity of migrant children and the barriers they may encounter. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with government officials working in a provincial education department in East China. The findings indicated that the practices advocated by the local government showed the following five characteristics: (1) the key practices implemented by the local government were almost exclusively related to migrant children’s access to education, (2) the local government paid greater attention to the primary and lower secondary stages of migrant children’s education, (3) there was no task force dedicated to migrant children’s education, (4) although several government agencies worked on migrant children’s education, the provincial education department played a leading role, and (5) the local government did not work closely with private schools on migrant children’s education because of a lack of trust. Evidence from this study also suggests three key barriers to promoting educational equity: lack of educational resources, uneven distribution of good teachers, and lack of reform of the household registration system. These findings have important implications for re-evaluating policies and practices promoting educational equity for Chinese migrant children at the state and regional levels.