The Education of Migrant Children and China's Future

A “House United” or a “House Divided”: Investigating the Role of China’s Household Registration in Educational Quality and Equity in K12 Classrooms

“…Unsupringsingly, the places with the highest percentages of migrants and migrant children in China are the coastal provinces and provincial cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong. According to Ming's (2013) research, they have been the top three destinations for many years, and migrants have been making up an increasing proportion of the population in all three places. Based on Ming's study, in 2010, the migrant population figures had risen to 39, 35.9 and 30 percent of the total population of those three areas.…”

“…And those of their migrant peers without local hukou in Beijing, even following some students as they migrated back to their hometowns for future studies. For those migrant families choose to stay in their destination cities, they were often asked to pay substantial special fees to enroll their children in local public schools (Ming, 2013;Xiong, 2015). Those additional educational registration fees can be very expensive and many migrant families could not afford.…”

“…Those additional educational registration fees can be very expensive and many migrant families could not afford. The most important restriction that could shut down the educational door for migrant students was that migrant students were not allowed to take the public high school entrance examination in cities such as Shanghai upon middle school graduation, and thus would not be allowed admission to a Shanghai public high school (Ming, 2013). As a result, their only road to high school and college was to return to their hometowns.…”

“…Unsupringsingly, although local governments and public schools are willing to open the door for migrant students for entering, their more urgent needs of "staying" still remains unsolved. Migrants' children who inherit their parents' non-local hukou status are officially counted as migrants, generation after generation, no matter how long their parents have stayed in the host city (Ming, 2013). Despite the recent reforms or "relaxations" in hukou policies, migrant children have still never had a chance of becoming "true" urban citizens and really integrating into the local social and cultural environment.…”

“…There is an official education system composed mainly of public and private schools which approved by the local government; and an unofficial education system of private migrant schools with or without official school licenses (Xiong, 2015). If given a real choice, according to Ming (2013), "almost all migrant families would jump at the opportunity to educate their children in a public school, where the quality of teachers and school facilities are unquestionably better. Unfortunately, three factors make the public system largely irrelevant to migrant students and their parents: access, public examination requirement, and examination syllabi" (p.99).…”