All the children at this primary
school in a Beijing suburb come from China’s provinces.
“We actually prefer it
when the government leaves us alone. When they visit the school, they usually either
try to close us down or fine us for various things.”
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Educational leaps
When the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed
in 1949, a mere 20 per cent of the country’s primary school-age children were enrolled
in school while 80 per cent of the population was illiterate. Education has been
an unwavering priority of this country of 1.2 billion people. After efforts at universalizing
primary education, the government passed a law in 1986 extending compulsory education
to nine years. The country has recorded some remarkable achievements over the past
fifty years. In 1998, the net enrollment ratio1 of primary school-age children reached 98.9 per cent
, while adult illiteracy stands at 16.37 per cent, according to a report2
prepared for the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal, April 2000). The report
stresses that efforts are now being focused on improving access to education in poor
regions and those with minority populations, facilitating fundraising for educational
purposes and raising the overall quality of teachers.
1. Number of children
enrolled who are in the officially defined primary school age-group, expressed as
a percentage of the total population of that age-group.
2. China’s country report can be found at:
www2.unesco.org/efa/wef/
countryreport/china
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One of the greatest challenges
is to help pupils overcome a sense of inferiority wrought by their second-class status. |
Despite China’s educational achievement,
migrant children in the country’s big cities are struggling to find a place in school.
For many, the unlicensed route is at best, the only option
 Every semester, Li Shumei and Yi Benyao
turn away hundreds of applicants seeking to study at their school, located in a former
paint factory in western Beijing. It’s not because they’re choosey: they know all
too well that these children may not have another chance of stepping into a classroom.
But there is simply not enough space to satisfy demand.
This unlicensed school caters to over 1,300 children from 28 Chinese provinces. “Many
of the kids have to ride four different buses to get here in the mornings, it takes
them up to two hours,” says Li. “And they work hard knowing how difficult it is for
their parents to afford it.” What makes these children different from other city-dwellers
is simply that they belong to China’s “floating population,” a label used to describe
people who are not permanently registered in their current place of residence. Most
are the children of peasants who have left the poverty-stricken countryside in search
of work in big cities.
Employed in menial jobs with no security or healthcare, migrants are responsible
for the lion’s share of the tough physical labour that has transformed urban skylines
in the past decade or so. While the government puts the “floating population” at
100 million, Western analysts estimate the figure closer to 150 million, making the
phenomenon one of the largest rural-to-urban migrations in history.
This migration began in 1979, when the commune system was dismantled. Agricultural
productivity boomed, fewer hands were needed to work the land, so families headed
to cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. In the mid-1980s, as rural incomes steadily
fell, the trickle became a flood, prompting municipal authorities to tighten migration
rules. Migrants would now be required to get temporary residence permits and letters
of employment before coming to the city. In practice, tens of millions never obtain
such permits. As such, they are not registered in the place where they are living,
contrary to permanent migrants whose move is officially sanctioned. Their temporary
status exposes them to widespread discrimination. When it comes to education, their
only option, until recently, has been to enroll their children in an unlicensed school.
Li Shumei left Henan Province in 1993 to work in a clothing market in Beijing. At
the time, she says, there were no schools for migrant children in the capital. Nor
were they allowed to enroll in city schools. A former teacher, she started educating
a few children in her home before starting up a school with her husband. “For our
pupils in the lower grades, the level of Chinese and mathematics is about the same
as in regular schools,” said Li. Teachers have to make do with a lack of books and
other materials, but Li explains that one of the greatest challenges is to help pupils
overcome a sense of inferiority wrought by their second-class status. And because
the school is unlicensed, they face difficulties re-entering the educational mainstream
to continue in higher grades, though many, once they reach the age of 12, return
to their home provinces to continue their schooling while living with relatives.
Some of school’s teachers are recent graduates from the students’ home provinces,
others are retired instructors from Beijing. Their wages are less than half those
paid in the mainstream, with no benefits. All expenses incurred in running the school,
including salaries, are derived from paltry tuition fees—about $100 a year. Li was
fortunate enough to receive a generous donation from a retired couple in Los Angeles
who read about the school in an overseas Chinese newspaper. The funds were put towards
relocating the school when police ordered its removal from an earlier site.
According to the Ford Foundation, there are between 200 and 300 unlicensed schools
operating in the capital which struggle to provide schooling for an estimated 100,000
migrant children, many of whom receive no education at all. Dorothy Solinger, a political
science professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of Contesting
Citizenship in Urban China, estimated that only 40 per cent of migrant children between
five and twelve attended school in Beijing, compared with 100 per cent of native
children. This situation is mirrored in other booming cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Chen Yi Fu, principal of the Hu Wan Elementary school in north-eastern Shanghai,
estimates that “in some migrant communities, only 20 to 30 per cent of children go
to school.” Official statistics differ. According to a 1996 study conducted by the
Department of Basic Education, the average enrollment ratio of migrant children stood
at 96.2 per cent. The study attributed non attendance to overcrowding, high fees
and an unfavourable home environment.
Media exposure and pressure from several delegates from the National People’s Congress
led to a change in the law in May 1998. The central government decreed that unlicensed
schools could exist and that it is unlawful for large municipalities to deny entrance
to migrant children between six and 14 who had lived for more than six months in
the area. City governments often responded by jacking tuition fees to impossibly
high levels for migrants—up to $440 annually, when the average yearly income of a
migrant worker in Beijing is an estimated $600. And to date, only a handful of cities,
such as Wuhan and Guiyang, have granted legal status to migrant schools according
to the People’s Economic Journal.
For Chen Yi Fu, a native of Anhui Province, “the Shanghai government doesn’t feel
they are responsible for educating our children, even though the latter belong to
families from rural areas who do all the hard jobs.” Yi Fu’s school caters to children
from 13 provinces, who pay close to $100 per year for tuition. “They are the lucky
ones,” he said, bemoaning the $7,000 rent he has to pay each year to the army, which
owns the land.
Besides the 1998 law however, there are signs that the situation is slowly changing.
Recognizing that China’s economic miracle has clearly not benefitted all regions,
the central government has embarked on a massive scheme to invest in the country’s
hinterland. Moreover, “there are indications that in some respects, things are getting
slightly better for rural migrants in big cities,” said Solinger. “The municipal
governments in some cities are now more permissive about letting parents set up schools
of their own. More migrants can afford to pay the extra fee required for their children
to attend city schools, not to mention that some migrant parents can now afford to
purchase the card which enables their children to attend city schools on city terms.”
Over the years however, people from the provinces have become accustomed to fending
for themselves to provide education. “We actually prefer it when the government leaves
us alone,” says Chen Yi Fu. “When they visit the school, they usually either try
to close us down or fine us for various things.”
But with the likelihood that China will soon join the World Trade Organization and
compete in world agricultural markets, a large portion of the country’s 800 million
farmers might find it even more difficult to survive in the countryside. If current
trends continue, there is little doubt that migrant education, and more broadly,
migrant rights, will become an increasingly pressing issue on the government’s books.
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