Educating China’s Migrant Children: A Survey of Government Policy, Discrimination and Reform
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2013
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Bi-College (Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges). Department of East Asian Studies
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Abstract
Despite China’s national emphasis on education and the central government’s strict implementation of a 9-year compulsory education law, millions of Chinese migrant children are still excluded from the state-run education system. My thesis will examine the nature and history of this discriminatory education situation facing China’s migrants. After exploring the institutional barriers and policies that created this situation, I use the results of previous studies and two interviews to shed light on the poor schooling conditions found in many of China’s community migrant schools. After being excluded from, or discriminated against in a city’s state-run education system, migrant children have no choice but to rely on underfunded, community-organized schools for their primary education. Without government funding, or even recognition, migrant schools generally provide sub-standard education to their students. Recently, however, some city governments have implemented reforms aimed at integrating migrant children into their state-run schooling system. In my final section, I will examine two specific reform initiatives that were recently undertaken in the cities of Wenzhou and Pudong. These substantial migrant education reforms are an attempt by the two city governments to provide more extensive social benefits to their migrant populations. Therefore, I argue that the education reforms were motivated by each city’s desire to ensure future economic success by attracting and retaining a more skilled labor force.