Long Distance
Families
China's new generation of
migrant workers
find a new education solution
DAXING,Beijing — It is an ordinary Sunday afternoon, Chenxi, a 13-year-old girl, is waiting at a bus stop outside the road of South Sixth Ring. Like some other passengers, Chenxi is carrying a backpack and wearing the uniform of a middle school in Hebei Province. Most of them actually are waiting for the same long-distance bus for the same destination—Gu’an, a Hebei County which is close to the southern part of Beijing, 40 kilometers away from the capital. These young passengers in school uniforms are not on an outing. This bus trip, which takes more than 40 minutes, is their weekly commute trip to Gu'an. They are migrant children in Beijing who chose to go to middle schools in Hebei.
Although Chenxi grew up in Beijing, she has no Beijing hukou (registered permanent residence) as a migrant child, and it is still rather difficult for her to be enrolled into a public school close to her home. Apart from the provision of a total of five certificates, her parents are also required to have social security in Beijing, which as a consequence makes it impossible for many migrant children to have access to public schools. Even if they can study at migrant schools, it does not mean that they can have the chance to take the senior high school entrance examination and college entrance examination in Beijing.
For the purpose of being provided with a chance to take the examination, many migrant children will be sent back to their hometown by their parents to attend the school where they have hukou, and it is more likely that they will be left-behind children when going back to their hometowns. In the meanwhile, more and more migrant workers are with the hopes that their children are able to continue their studies without being too far away from them, and some parents are even making efforts to find some new solutions.
“I don’t want my children to become left-behind kids who can’t see us for a long period of time,” said Zhang Lili, who has been in Beijing for 14 years.
With regard to the migrant children living in Beijing who are unable to continue their compulsory education in the capital, it seems that a public school located 40 kilometers away is actually not a bad choice.
Chenxi is waiting for the bus to Gu'an with her mother
Chenxi is waiting for the bus to Gu'an with her mother
In China, migrant children are also known as “floating children”, they are broadly defined as “the children aged 6–14 who have temporarily lived as migrants for more than half a year with their parents or guardians”. According to the latest statistic , the total population of children aged 0-17 in China is 278.19 million ,and it is estimated that there are a total of 34.3 million migrant children in the entire country. It means that one out of every eight children in mainland China is a migrant child. It is also shown by a report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that the proportion occupied by migrant children in Beijing is about 36.28%, and it means that almost 4 out of every ten children in the Chinese capital are migrant children. There is no denying that the proportion of migrant children in Beijing is relatively high in comparison with other cities in China.
“The population of migrant children in Beijing is about 400,000, and almost 80% of them are attending public schools. These data are the information collected from the Statistics Department.” says Wei Jiayu, General Director and the lead researcher of New Citizen Program, a non-governmental research organization based in Beijing. “In Beijing, many children are studying in migrant schools which haven’t obtained official permission yet. It can be observed from our research that at least 50,000 migrant students are available in these schools, most of whom do not have urban hukou or student status. Although most of them grew up in the capital, it is difficult to find the information of these children from official statistics.”
Cheng Zixiang ,the nine-year-old boy who was brought to Beijing from his hometown Anhui Province by his mother when he was only six months old, and he is currently a Grade-three student at a migrant school. Zixiang is able to understand every word of the conversation between his parents in the dialect of Anhui, but he can only speak Mandarin with a Beijing accent. Like many of his classmates, Zixiang grew up in Beijing, and he would go to visit his hometown every year during the Spring Festival with his parents, but Zixiang and his peers are very different from the migrant children in the past. In comparison with the children growing up in the countryside and then going to the city later by following their parents, it seems that the hometown of Zixiang is only a familiar place for him, and Beijing is the place where he calls home. “I like Beijing more than Anhui, because my mother, my father, and all of my friends are here,” says Zixiang.
Even though the boy grew up in Beijing, Zixiang would go to Gu’an County, Hebei Province to receive the education as a student in junior high school three years later. For Zixiang’s mother, this is deemed as the best choice she can make for her son. It is not for the reason that the education quality in Hebei is better than that in the capital, but because she knows clearly that the chance for her child’s being admitted to public middle school in Beijing is rather slim without a Beijing hukou.
In August 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Education announced a policy that students can register for a school by signing up for an electronic school enrollment number. This policy, is also known as the Xueji policy (student status policy), which aims at “establishing a unified standard for student information management system.” However, considering the large migrant population, Beijing enforced city-specific requirements as a supplement. In 2014, the policy of five certificates related to migration was officially implemented in Beijing. This policy allows the migrant students to obtain a school enrollment number under the national policy and it provides students with access to be admitted to public schools but they are qualified only when the parents of migrant children have a set of “five certificates”, as well as social security of a specific district.
In fact, in order for a child to qualify for a public school, it is not only about these five specific certificates and social security. Migrant workers must prepare many other documents to apply for these certificates. For instance, a migrant worker must be qualified for five supporting pieces of paperwork for the aim of receiving the first Proof of Housing Certificate.
For those children who are unable to attend public schools, two main choices are available for most of the parents. The first one is to stay, and thus their children can only go to private migrant schools with relatively poor condition. It is likely that their children will be unable to have a chance to take part in the College Entrance Examination in the future. The second one is to leave, and consequently, the children will be sent back to their hometown in the rural area to attend the schools where they have hukou, and it is most likely that they will become left-behind children.
However, some parents neither let their children stay in Beijing nor sent their children back to their hometown. They make the third choice—sending them to study in Hebei. The reason for this choice is straightforward--it is not necessary for the parents to give up their work in Beijing, and they can meet with their children every week.
Of course, there is another very more important reason behind it--the policy related to the college entrance examination policy announced by the Hebei Education Department in 2013. It is announced that as long as the students have “school enrollment number” of high school in Hebei for more than two years, and the parents have the “Employment/Unemployment Registration Certificate”, as well as the local residence certificate, then the students from different places can register for the College Entrance Examination in Hebei.
Under the influence of this policy, Yanjiao, Langfang, Xianghe, Gu’an and other cities in Hebei, which are closer to Beijing, have suddenly attracted a large number of new students.
After her graduation from elementary school, Chenxi has been studying in Gu’an Middle School for more than one year. She studies and lives at school on weekdays and she’d come back to her home in Beijing on a 40-minute long-distance bus trip every weekend.
“I didn’t get used to it initially, but it’s much better after two months later,” said Chenxi. The 13-year-old girl has already adapted herself to the new environment in Hebei Province. Like Chenxi, for the purpose of going to public schools which are not too far away from their parents, more and more migrant children have to live a semi-independent life between the two cities from a very young age.
For many children who are unable to study in Beijing, especially those who want to take part in the College Entrance Examination in the future, then the only choice is the surrounding area of Beijing if they don’t want to go back to their hometown. The schools in Hebei, which is closer to Beijing, will be given the top priority.
Due to the reason that an increasing number of parents choose to allow their children to go to schools in Hebei Province, the number of students in many public secondary schools in Hebei Province is close to saturation. “About half of the students in the secondary schools in Gu’an are migrant children from Beijing,” said Wei Jiayu, Lead researcher of New Citizen Program, “Hebei is no longer known as a new option.”
Last year, Chenxi’s parents bought an apartment in Gu’an. For them, all of their family plans will always be centered on this county near Beijing. “When my son is ought to go to junior high school there, our family will move to Gu’an.” Chenxi's mother said. “It will be not necessary for the children’s father to quit his current job. After all, Gu’an is only 40 kilometers away from Beijing."
