The new government policy of scrapping school fees for students
in poor rural areas has received widespread support but there are
calls for children of migrant workers in cities to get the same
breaks.
Children who are taken to the cities by their parents seeking
employment are still subject to urban school fees for their
compulsory education, unlike their former neighbors who remain in
rural areas.
He Xiaoming, a pupil at the Xingzhi experimentary primary school
in western Haidian District in Beijing, said he hoped to stay on
and study at a middle school.
"It is good news that my previous classmates in my hometown will
be able to enjoy free education, but my parents cannot afford the
tuition because Beijing-based schools charge a lot for those who
have not registered as permanent residents," said He, who achieved
excellent marks.
He's parents come from east China's agricultural province of
Anhui and are vegetable peddlers.
Fu Zhiming, a teacher at the school, said, "Local students in
the city will be able to enjoy free education almost at the same
time as students in rural areas, but how about kids from families
of the migrants?
"It is not fair to this group of students," Fu said, calling for
free schooling for migrant workers' children.
According to Yi Benyao, principal of the primary school,
authorities have made maximum efforts to help rural students from
migrant workers' families receive better education.
The school currently has more than 3,000 students from some 24
provincial areas.
Education of the huge population in the countryside, home to 900
million people, has remained a hard nut to crack.
Since modern education was introduced a century ago,
government-funded, free compulsory education has remained an
unattained goal.
Over the years, citizens were upset by the lack of funding and
government support due to wars, conflicts and other social and
economic problems.
In 1986, China promulgated the law on compulsory education,
which stipulates that the state should provide a nine-year
compulsory education "free of tuitions" for all primary and junior
middle school students.
However, the law does not guarantee funding of compulsory
education, thus obliging many schools, particularly those in
impoverished rural regions, to either go on collecting tuitions or
charge "miscellaneous fees."
Surveys show that farmers, whose annual per capita net income
was only 3,200 yuan (US$400) in 2005, must pay about 800 yuan a
year for a child's elementary and secondary education.
But the new law on free education for rural school children has
been welcomed by migrant workers in cities, who have called it a
milestone.
(Eastday.com March 18, 2006)