Largest-Ever School Merger Lifts 400,000 Migrant Children out of Poor Education

China’s enormous economic output can be attributed – to a notable degree – to an army of about 300 million migrant workers. It is therefore hard to believe that Chinese leaders forgot to build migrant children’s entitlement to compulsory education into their policies. In the 1990s, this policy hole led to a patchwork of privately operated migrant schools, many of them poorly managed, and with their headmasters caring more about generating profits than providing education. The education reform agenda 2020 is still being finalised, but a pre-released version reveals that the focus is now shifting toward equal education by explicitly entitling migrant children to compulsory education.

Private migrant schools tried to solve one problem and created another

By declaring that “the colour of a cat does not matter so long as it catches mice“, Chairman Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, once encouraged his fellow Chinese to hunt for money, by hook or by crook. Driven by their leadership’s decree, and with opportunities arising from a lack of government-sponsored education for migrant children, some entrepreneurial Chinese set out to catch their mice by setting up private schools, taking concepts such as curricular quality, public hygiene, and food safety off their educational agenda altogether. With a student-teacher ratio of 1:35 and more and with teachers lacking formal training, many of these schools developed into low-quality children’s homes. However, there are a growing number of exceptions to this model, such as the private elementary school operated by Rural China in Shanxi province. The school applies locally-relevant teaching methods that develop rural children’s self-confidence, communication skills, independent thinking, empathy, and awareness of social issues.

Shanghai World Expo opening marked date for largest-ever merger of compulsory education institutions

Plastering “Better City, Better Life” in inconceivable variants and places all over Shanghai, Expo organisers have taken up the cause of sustainable society. A public, wholeheartedly led debate on 400,000 migrant children ailing in improperly managed private schools could have severely damaged the targeted Mister-Clean-image of the city. As a result, officials decided to spearhead the government-decreed movement in 2008 and started to take over or raze a large number of private grass-root schools. According to Corinne Hua, director of Stepping Stones, retired headmasters of public schools were asked to return to the educational workforce replacing their out-of-favour private counterparts. Schools doomed to be closed transferred their pupils to public schools “if there were enough places and children scored high enough to catch up with their to-be classmates”, concludes Hua. Stepping Stones aims to improve the quality of migrant children’s education in Shanghai by sending native speakers to migrant schools to teach English language.

On the flip side of the shiny Shanghai Expo coin, another activity was carried out potentially threatening the education of thousands of migrant children: In an attempt to clean Shanghai’s urban roads from street vendors – usually migrants -, around 50,000 street stall operators were forced out of business over night. Fruit vendor Zhou may be indicative of the impact of the one-size-fits-all decision making of local authorities: “We were selling fruits here for more than 7 years”, says Mr. Zhou who has been trading high-quality fruits all his professional life. He further states that he was given only one day notice by local authorities before his booth was demolished. He then describes the seriousness of his family’s situation: “We cannot afford renting a store on this street, and if we don’t find a solution soon, we might have to return to our hometown”. According to Zhou, this scenario would result in their two children being cut off from their classmates, and they would also not be able to further benefit from the free private tutoring two foreigners provided to them every weekend.

China, once again, approaches a serious societal issue in its education sector pragmatically. But as with other cases, the one-size-fits-all approach taken by local authorities not only stops those unjustifiably benefiting from their compatriots’ difficulties: schools, as the one operated by Rural China, will likely be closed down destroying the organisation’s foundation for delivering their innovative educational concepts, degrading it to an advisory agency, or forcing its headmasters out of the education business altogether. We hope that local authorities start thinking holistically, acknowledging the fact that Potemkin villages do not take precedence over education.

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