The influence of migrant children's identification with the college matriculation policy on their educational expectations

Abstract

Based on the theoretical framework of cultural reproduction theory and ecosystem theory, this paper explores the impact of migrant children's identification with the college entrance examination policy on their educational expectations and the associated underlying mechanisms from the micro, meso, and macro levels. In total, 1,770 questionnaires were collected from students, and 436 people were interviewed, including students, their teachers, and their parents. They are all from China. Through multidimensional analysis, the results indicated that both individual academic achievement and family social capital have positive impacts on migrant children's educational expectations and that social class segregation in school and perceived social discrimination have negative impacts on their educational expectations. Migrant children's identification with the policy has a significant positive impact on these children's educational expectations. Their identification with the policy enhances the positive impact of individual academic achievement and family social capital on their educational expectations and partially weakens the negative impact of social class segregation in school and perceived social discrimination on their educational expectations. The analysis suggests that college matriculation policy for migrant children drives a compensation mechanism that involves the “principle of justice”, a cultural mechanism that involves “promoting learning through examinations”, and an institutional mechanism involving “urban-rural integration” to increase educational expectations. This study enriches and develops the expectation theory of migrant children and provides a policy reference for local governments to improve their policies for college entrance examinations for migrant children and to promote household registration system reform.

Association between Urban Educational Policies and Migrant Children’s Social Integration in China: Mediated by Psychological Capital

“…Unlike general educational policies, the characteristics of urban educational policies are as follows: (1) the government departments of inflow cities are mainly responsible for solving the urban schooling problem of migrant children; (2) the full-time public primary and secondary schools in inflow cities are mainly responsible for receiving migrant children; and (3) the residence permit of migrant children, rather than their household registration, is used as the main certificate for enrollment [ 1 ]. The studies of Xu et al (2022) argue that migrant children’s perceptions of fairness and equity from urban educational policies help them enjoy high-quality urban education, realize higher educational attainment and accumulation of human capital, and ultimately promotes their social integration [ 24 ]. On the basis of the analysis above, this study develops the following hypotheses on the relationship between social integration and migrant children’s identification with educational policies:…”

“…Parsons’ systems theory provides the method for measurement and dimension division of the identification with policies [ 39 ]. Migrant children’s identification with educational policies, a variable, is essentially the cognitive level, the degree of recognition, and the value judgment of migrant children about the relevant educational policies of inflow cities [ 16 , 24 ]. Based on the above literature, starting from three dimensions (policy awareness, policy recognition, and policy evaluation), this study has prepared the scale of Chinese migrant children’s identification with educational policies.…”

Negative Impacts of School Class Segregation on Migrant Children’s Education Expectations and the Associated Mitigating Mechanism

“…The household registration system is accompanied by indelible identity labels and discrimination, which affect students’ access to social support in schools [ 32 ]. Students with different household registration usually have different educational expectations, and nonlocally registered students who cannot participate in local matriculation examinations in the place of inflow have significantly lower expectations for years of schooling [ 33 , 34 ]. It can be seen from this that the household-registration-based difficulties of migrant children in continuing their studies in the localities have blocked the establishment of their good educational expectations.…”