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March 5, 2010
Wall Street Journal
In his annual work report speech before the National People’s
Congress Friday, Premier Wen Jiabao devoted considerable attention to
the need for improvement of living conditions for China’s 150 million
urban migrant workers.
China’s migrants are still subject to a hereditary household
registration system, known as hukou, that divides citizens into urban
and rural residents. While urban residents continue to enjoy
preferential access to subsidized education, health care and housing in
the cities in which they are registered, outsiders face restrictions
and often have to pay much more for benefits available to urban hukou
holders. Amid increasingly vigorous calls for reform of the system, Chinese leaders have promised changes.
On Friday, Wen vowed that China “will solve employment and living
problems rural migrant workers face in cities and towns in a planned
and step-by-step manner, and gradually ensure that they receive the
same treatment as urban residents in areas such as pay, children’s
education, healthcare, housing and social security.” (PDFs of Wen’s
work report in English and Chinese)
 Associated Press- Unlicensed schools for migrant children fill a gap in social services
But it looks like there is still a very long way to go, as the
recent experiences of some migrant schools in Beijing illustrates.
Migrant workers have built modern Beijing, but their communities are
still subject to the whims of development. Cuigezhuang village, outside
the Fifth Ring Road in northeast Beijing, was until very recently home
to an estimated 30,000 people at any one time, the vast majority
migrant workers and their families. Now, the place is approaching ghost
town status. Most of its brick, cement and cinderblock shacks have been
evacuated on orders from the local government, which is clearing
Cuigezhuang and several other villages in the surrounding area to
urbanize this underdeveloped corner of the city. Seven schools
established for the children of migrant workers in five nearby villages
have already been closed and will be demolished soon. Across the
capital, a total of around 30 migrant schools serving 10,000 students
are threatened by development plans, representing 10% of Bejiing’s estimated 300 migrant schools. Of the total, only 64 are licensed.
Education for children of migrant workers often presents a dilemma:
Urban public schools tend to charge steep non-resident fees that
low-paid migrant parents cannot afford, so they must often choose
between unregistered, quasi-legal classrooms– set up by individuals
without the aid of the state—or sending children back to their
hometowns to be educated in the local school system where they have
their hukou. Parents who choose the latter usually can only see their
children once a year, during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Luo Chao was until recently the principal of one of the affected
schools, the Cuigezhuang Experimental School. Luo, a former village
government cadre in Henan province, is himself a migrant, having moved
to Beijing with his family in 2000 in search of a better life.
“The income back home was too little, only 200 to 300 yuan per
month, which was hardly enough to sustain an entire family,” he said.
“We had very little land and there’s not much business there, so we
sold our house and decided to settle down in Beijing.”
After seeing the limited educational opportunities available to
migrant children in Beijing, Luo opened his first school in 2002, with
an initial investment of 130,000 yuan. Two years later, he borrowed
money from relatives and moved the school to a larger site, formerly
home to a dance school and wooden door factory. The school offered
classes from kindergarten to the second year of middle school, and its
student body sometimes exceeded 1,000, says Luo (last semester, it was
760). Luo reckons he and his relatives have invested more than 1.6
million yuan to date, including an outstanding debt of 200,000 yuan.
Luo says he repeatedly tried but failed to obtain a license for his
school, which would have made it eligible for government funding or
subsidies, and might have provided some protection from demolition.
Given his school’s unofficial status, Luo says his chances of recouping
much of the investments are small. Still, he appears determined to
continue educating migrant children, recently taking over another
school in Daxing district in the south of Beijing. “After the school
was closed down by the government, many migrant parents came to me and
begged me to help their kids, and I just couldn’t bear for them to drop
out of school at such a young age,” Luo said.
Some of Luo’s students have followed him to the new school or found
places at other migrant schools; others have left Beijing with their
parents, while a smaller number (about 100, according to Luo) are
staying at home.
The only school left open in the area is the Wenyuhe Bilingual
Experimental School, a fairly modern public school opened by the
Chaoyang district government in 2004. Although the school is open to
migrant students, there is currently no room for new students,
according to a teacher who answered the phone in the guidance office.
Meanwhile, Luo and other principals of the shuttered schools in the
area are holding out hope that local authorities will offer them at
least some compensation, which could be used to set up new migrant
schools further out on the outskirts of Beijing.
Wang Jie, principal of the now-closed Good Kids Kindergarten, also
in Cuigezhuang village, said she has borrowed 100,000 yuan from friends
and family to rent another space in Shunyi district, where many
migrants are heading, and is preparing to open another school for young
children there on March 20. But she worries that local authorities in
Shunyi, which is known for its luxurious villas, won’t welcome
unlicensed migrant schools.
“There is a great need in our society for privately-owned migrant
schools, so why doesn’t the government ever offer us any help or
understanding?” Wang asks.
– Sky Canaves and Sue Feng
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Comments
So informative site! Big thanks!