Schooling migrants challenges Beijing
Millions of workers pouring into capital to find a better life
March 1, 2007
Beijing -- As the first cold weather hit Beijing in the fall, students and teachers at the Xingzhi Migrant Middle School packed their belongings, preparing to move after their drafty building, accessible only by a puddle-ridden dirt road, was ordered closed by city officials.
The school has constantly been on the move since opening in 1994 for children of migrant workers. In 2004, its elementary school relocated three times in one semester. Now, the middle school was being uprooted to a remote suburb to make room for a public school for disabled students.
"Our most severe problem is instability," said Li Shumei, the school's co-principal.
Xingzhi is one among a vast network of private schools -- many of them underground, makeshift and illegal -- that has emerged to serve children of the estimated 150 million migrant workers who have left rural villages in search of a better life in China's booming cities. Most of these schools lack the necessities of modern education, like computers and science labs. Many don't have playgrounds or teachers with university degrees. Some students go without books and sit in rickety chairs at battered desks.
But the migrant schools serve children whose parents cannot afford the steep fees charged by China's public schools for students who come from other than their hometowns.
Last year, Beijing officials ordered the closure of dozens of the city's estimated 250 unregistered private schools that educate about 90,000 children in the capital. Some critics say that the government is trying to remove many migrant workers in advance of next year's Summer Olympics. According to Human Rights Watch, city officials have discussed expelling 1 million migrant laborers before the Games begin.
"The Beijing government thinks the number of migrants should be limited if Beijing wants to develop into an international city," said Cui Chuanyi, a government researcher who studies migrant education.
The government has not enforced many of its own closure orders, allowing schools to re-emerge in other locations, and has eased residency rules that had once prevented peasants from leaving their farms. And education officials have ordered Beijing public schools to stop charging extra fees for migrant students, at least through the ninth grade.
Many schools are still charging those fees, according to critics who say China must do more to address its unequal, two-tier educational system or risk future social stability.
Migrants are necessary "to construct roads, buildings, clean our environment, provide services, sell vegetables and fruits," said Cui. "But if their access to public services does not improve, there are sure to be clashes."
China's migrant workers are becoming an "urban underclass," held down by economic exploitation and residency rules that deny them access to medical, housing and education benefits, Amnesty International, another human rights group, said in a report released today. Migrants usually perform the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs in factories and on construction sites, and they tend to have little legal recourse in disputes with employers, the report said.
The Xing Zhi Xi Wang Migrant School in Beijing has managed to stay open even though it was ordered closed last summer. Each classroom inside the barracks-like stone structure is crammed with students. Little adorns the walls apart from chalkboards, and there are no playgrounds or computers.
Four eighth-grade girls, who chatted outside the principal's threadbare office, said the school was one of the few in Beijing that their parents could afford -- $44 for a five-month semester. "Some teachers only work here for a couple of days, and then they leave," said one of the girls, Hu Xue Lin.
Zhu Sanying, a migrant from Jiangxi province who cleans houses, says the public middle school her eldest son started attending last fall charges an enrollment fee of about $1,900 -- her annual salary. Zhu says she has been forced to take so many jobs that she hardly sees her three sons.
Government researcher Cui says the federal government has made a considerable effort in recent years to make public schools more accessible to migrants, partly by ordering local governments to stop charging high fees. But some public school officials argue that they will be deluged with other migrant students if they treat them differently. They "regard these people as a hazard to the security of their cities," Cui says.
Du Zhan, a Xingzhi ninth-grader, says she feels more comfortable studying at a private migrant school. But she worries about next year when she is scheduled to start high school. Education at Xingzhi ends after the ninth grade.
By law, migrant students who continue their studies must take a university entrance exam in the 10th grade in their home villages. Du does not want to leave her parents and friends for a life that she hardly remembers. And her parents, who left a small village in central-eastern China six years ago, would rather see her drop out of school than travel far from Beijing.
Until she decides her next step, Du said she relishes her time in school.
"Students in public schools may take those facilities for granted," she said. "In our school, students cherish the opportunity to be here."
Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.