Testing times for student admissions

University candidates who don't have hukou, or household registration, in major cities have to take the entrance exam in their home provinces. Their parents are uniting to change the situation, as Feng Xin reports.

Nonresident parents in Beijing have been signing a petition to fight a policy that will continue to limit their children's eligibility to take the national college entrance exam in the city. Twenty-six of them jointly submitted a formal request for an administrative review to the Ministry of Education on Jan 11.

This came after the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education issued what it called a "transitional" policy on Dec 30, under which nonresident children cannot take the college entrance exam in the city within the next two years.

"I was angry and heartbroken," said Meng Fanling, a nonresident mother and parent volunteer in Beijing. "Our efforts and fighting for all these years have turned into nothing."

For the past three decades in China, high school graduates could only take the national college entrance exam, known as gaokao, in their home provinces, where their household registration, or hukou, were issued. But one in six Chinese citizens no longer lives where their hukou is registered, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics for 2011.

Having to return to one's home province to be eligible to take the exam has been a huge burden for hundreds of thousands of families.

While nonresident parents were disappointed in Beijing's Dec 30 policy, on the other hand, Liu Yang, a native Beijinger, has been rallying opposition to these parents. His blog and micro blog have tens of thousands of followers.

"I feel sorry for the migrant families, but it is not simply an issue about education," Liu said. "It's a matter of the city's population capacity. It just cannot take in more migrants and give them equal rights."

Zhang Lingxiao (left), a native of Chongqing, studies at a high school in Jinjiang, Fujian province. The Fujian government issued a policy allowing nonresident students in the province to take the college entrance examination there in 2014 as long as they complete their three-year high school education in the province. They can also enjoy the same treatment as the local residents. Zhang Guojun / Xinhua

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