Jack Ma has a solution for China’s ‘left-behind kids’: boarding school
Tech giant founder calls on entrepreneurs to back his plan to merge rural schools with low enrolments, build dormitories and provide bus services
Jack Ma Yun has called on entrepreneurs to get behind a plan to give poor children like “Ice Boy” better access to education – by opening boarding schools in the countryside.
Eight-year-old “Ice Boy”, or Wang Fuman, became an internet sensation after his teacher posted a photo of him with his hair and eyebrows encrusted in ice after a freezing trek to school about a fortnight ago.
At an event organised by his charitable foundation on Sunday, the billionaire founder of Alibaba Group said many children in rural China had too far to travel to get to school. The average primary school pupil walked 5.4 kilometres from home to school in the countryside, he said, citing the Ministry of Education.
One solution was to shut down smaller schools that lacked resources and create boarding schools that could offer the children better teaching and accommodation, Ma said at a gathering in Sanya, Hainan Island ahead of an awards ceremony for rural teachers. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
“Many pupils have to climb mountains or take a boat to go to school. In my opinion, these kids should not be commuting between home and school every day – they should go to a boarding school,” Ma said, calling on more than 80 Chinese entrepreneurs at the event to work with him to promote the development of boarding schools in rural areas.