Recently, due to the prominence of the issue at the "Two Meetings," there has been a series of articles focusing on the challenges of reforming the hukou system and migrant families' rights. Below is one of them that gives a good overview of the current environment around migrant issues.

(Reuters) - They build the skyscrapers and lay the highways, mind the city children, sew the clothes and tend the shops, but China's army of migrant laborers are still fundamentally aliens in the country's bustling urban centers.  Jump to article

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)

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

Below is an excerpt from an article relating the power of sports in a girl's development ---

A large body of research shows that sports are associated with all sorts of benefits, like lower teenage pregnancy rates, better grades and higher self-esteem. But until now, no one has determined whether those improvements are a direct result of athletic participation. It may be that the type of girl who is attracted to sports already has the social, personal and physical qualities — like ambition, strength and supportive parents — that will help her succeed in life.

Now, separate studies from two economists offer some answers, providing the strongest evidence yet that team sports can result in lifelong improvements to educational, work and health prospects...

Using a complex analysis, Dr. Stevenson showed that increasing girls’ sports participation had a direct effect on women’s education and employment...

“It’s not just that the people who are going to do well in life play sports, but that sports help people do better in life,” she said, adding, “While I only show this for girls, it’s reasonable to believe it’s true for boys as well.”...

[Dr. Kaestner] found that the increase in girls’ athletic participation...was associated with a 7 percent lower risk of obesity 20 to 25 years later, when women were in their late 30s and early 40s. His article was published this month in the journal Evaluation Review.

Dr. Kaestner notes that while a 7 percent decline in obesity is modest, no other public health program can claim similar success. And other studies have shown that even a small drop in weight can lower risk for diabetes and other health problems.

There is still room for improvement. Today about 1 in 3 high school girls play sports, compared with about half of all boys. And participation varies widely by state, according to Dr. Stevenson’s research. Southern states like Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee still have big gender gaps, while Northern states like Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont are closer to parity.

“While we have more girls than ever before, we still have far more boys playing sports than girls,” said Nicole M. LaVoi, associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “The research clearly states that when anybody, boys and girls, are physically active, they can reap developmental and health benefits. But we haven’t reached equality yet.”

Full New York Times article available here.

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On January 31, 2010, CAI with the generous support of the Boston Consulting Group, brought 35 students, grades 6 and 7, from Dongba Shiyan School visited the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA).  They toured the exhibition of The Cores: Eight Pivot Images of Chinese Modern Art at UCCA, located in 798 Art Zone in the Chaoyang District of Beijing and took part in the workshop Rainbow Journey.  The students were delighted to have this opportunity to experience modern art in China and were inspired by the exhibited work.

The exhibition showcased eight of China’s contemporary artists who reflected on city life today.  Their works motivated the students to reflect deeply on their life in Beijing.  After the tour, an artist from UCCA conducted a workshop teaching students to draw their city life via , traditional Chinese painting with ink and brush.  The students enjoyed paining and had a heat discussion about their dream city life in Beijing.  After a lunch break, the students played  a team-building game that reinforced CAI’s Four Cs..  ,The event concluded with a journal session where students reflected upon their experiences of the day.  

“I was so happy to be part of this tour today.  These works were so unique in style and completely new to me!  A teacher taught us how to do water painting in a lovely workshop.  It was my first time to use brush to paint, and I did a good job!  I painted a landscape with mountains and water, because I wish Beijing have its own beautiful mountains and water and become a more wonderful place to live in. I will keep practicing my paining skills after this workshop.  I will definitely save this picture after the trip.  It was a wonderful wonderful experience!”