Easing of college exam barriers fails to satisfy migrant parents

Migrant parents expressed disappointment yesterday after three of the largest magnets of migrant labour - Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong - announced only a modest relaxation of residency restrictions for college entrance exams.

Officials in the three regions each submitted plans in advance of the State Council's year-end deadline for policies to overhaul the much criticised residency regime for the national entrance exams, or gaokao.

Regions have long restricted the exams largely to pupils who can prove residency under the restrictive hukou registration system - limiting options for prospective students and forcing thousands of migrants to choose between leaving their jobs and separating from their children.

The Beijing municipal government released a "transitional document" yesterday that allows migrant pupils to sit for gaokao in Beijing from 2014, provided their parents have contributed to the social security fund for six consecutive years. Even then, exam takers would have access only to tertiary vocational colleges.

Beijing authorities promised to draft a more detailed policy by the end of next year. Until then migrant pupils would be able to sit for the exams with a major caveat: they would have to take their scores back to their registered hometowns to be recruited.

A tearful Fan Yuqing, an office worker with a 14-year-old son who moved to Beijing from Henan seven years ago, said she felt insulted.