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Schools give migrant children a lesson in life

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-18 10:21

SHANGHAI -- When Zhu Haoqiang arrived in Shanghai last September, he was excited to be coming to live with his parents in China's biggest city.

The 14-year-old boy had been separated from his parents since he was little when they left to work 700 kilometers from his home in Anhui Province.

But as he was starting to get a taste of family life, it ended again. Zhu's mother, who worked at a clothing factory, lost her job when the global financial crisis hit exports. Living costs became too high for the family so Zhu and his mother moved back to their hometown.

Like many families, they returned after years of living and for the children, studying in the cities.

"It's okay to come back here," says Zhu, now a grade seven student in Wangzhai Secondary School in Wangdian County, Fuyang. "I didn't stay in Shanghai long enough for it to feel difficult to readjust to life here."

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But he admits he misses school in Shanghai, though he only studied at a migrant school. "I miss the environment the most, the living and the school environment, both are very nice in Shanghai, " Zhu says.

As tens of thousands of manufacturing companies collapsed amid slowing demand, an estimated 20 million migrants have lost their jobs in the cities and many have returned to their hometowns.

In Anhui, one of the provinces with the most migrant workers, 6.2 million returned before the Chinese New Year, says the provincial governor Wang Sanyun.

The rush back to their rural homes poses no big problems for the education of their children, says Tian Shimin, official of the provincial education bureau. "In our experience, migrants who take their child are those who have established very stable lives in the cities," Tian says.

With years of savings, Zhu's parents thought they could make a home in Shanghai. His father, a construction worker, who used to make a little more than 2,000 yuan a month and his mother 1,000 yuan, decided to bring their son to live with them in suburban Shanghai.

"I missed my parents a lot when I was back in our hometown," Zhu says. Now his father struggles on alone in Shanghai, thanks to the government's massive construction projects.

Many children are left behind in the countryside when their parents move to the cities to seek better jobs. In Anhui alone, more than 2.7 million are left behind, according to the provincial education bureau, and more than 30 percent of students below grade nine (usually below age 15) have parents in the cities.

For those with rural residency, their school days in the cities are nothing but a short-lived dream as they don't have a city huhouhousehold registration.

China's household registration system, set up in 1958 to control its citizens' movements, divided its countrymen into two groups: urban and rural residents. Social security welfare systems are based on the household registration system. Rural dwellers were denied access to public services including education, and medical care in the cities.

The 9-year compulsory education is free for both urban and rural kids. But, after that, children with city residency have access to government-subsidized schooling, whereas the migrant children must have to return to their hometowns if they want to continue high school education.

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