Migrants claim rights to local high schools
Every weekend, dozens of parents gather at subway stations or markets in Shanghai to campaign for equal education opportunities for their children, who are not eligible to sit high school or college entrance exams in the city. Even though many of these migrant parents have been working in Shanghai for years, they are not entitled to permanent residency there. They say that since they have contributed to the city's development, their children should enjoy the same rights as native Shanghai resident. Xu Juan, a 35-year-old housewife from Anhui province, is one of the campaign's leaders.
When did you start to get involved in this campaign?
At the beginning of this year I became concerned about the entrance-exam issue because my 13-year-old son will attend junior middle school in September, and in three years he will face the dilemma of whether to attend high school. Migrant children in Shanghai can receive nine years of free compulsory education, which covers primary and junior middle school. But if they want to go to high school, they have to return to their hometowns to take the entrance exam and attend high school there, because they don't have permanent residency in Shanghai. If they want to stay in Shanghai, the only option is a technical school. But I want my son to continue his high school studies in Shanghai with us. My husband came to Shanghai in 2004 to lead a small team installing air conditioners. A year later I brought my son from our hometown in Mengcheng county, Anhui, to Shanghai. Since then, my son has been studying in the city.
I thought it was so bad that children have to be separated from their parents because they aren't allowed to receive normal education in the cities where their parents work, all because of residency. I did some research online and found a website called 'I Want to Take the Gaokao' (the national college entrance exam), and there were many people talking about entrance exams not only for colleges but for high schools. I got to know some of these Shanghai-based parents who are fighting for the right to study in local high schools. Since I don't work and am available every day, I was selected to be one of the leaders of this group of volunteers.
What sort of impact does it have on children when they are forced to return to their hometowns?
They find that the entrance exams in those regions are quite difficult, because the textbooks and the exam papers are different from those in Shanghai. To get a good score, many migrant children have to quit their studies in Shanghai and return to their hometowns one or two years early to prepare for the exam. Meanwhile, their parents still work in Shanghai. In this situation, a lot of these teenagers, without any adult relatives to supervise and look after them, are more likely to neglect their studies or even slip into crime. I've also heard many parents say their children couldn't adapt to life in their hometowns, and their academic scores plummeted, even though some were among the top-ranked in their classes in Shanghai.
Do many of the migrant children object to having to leave Shanghai?
Yes, most of these children, who have been studying for years in Shanghai or were even born there, oppose this. A large number of these children say they are not familiar with their hometowns, they don't speak the local dialects and they regard Shanghai as their home. They question why they have to quit their schooling in Shanghai. A father from Sichuan told me that when he explained the reason to his 12-year-old daughter, she got angry and said it was unfair. She said that since society treats her in such an unjust way, she will seek reprisals when she grows up.
What activities do the parents take part in for this campaign?
On the weekends we collect signatures from passers-by on the street to support our movement. Most are sympathetic to our cause and are willing to write down their names and numbers. But there is a small number of Shanghai citizens who denounce us, saying that if migrant children are given the same educational rights as local children, the interests of the local ones will be hampered.
We have handed in our petition, and the 2,000 signatures we collected, to the Shanghai Education Bureau and to the Ministry of Education. But the authorities are only kicking the ball to each other: the Shanghai bureau said they had to follow the national policy, while the ministry said the matter should be decided by local governments. We plan to courier our collection of signatures to each National People's Congress delegate when they convene in March.
What do you envision will be the result of your movement?
I am confident, because two key figures, Premier Wen Jiabao and Minister of Education Yuan Guiren, have both told the media that the government is studying this residency-restriction issue and a timetable on reforming such policy will be released as soon as possible.
I am very enthusiastic about doing this volunteer work because we are not alone. There are 220 million migrant workers on the mainland, and it is estimated that there are millions of migrant children, all of whom face this stumbling block.
However, we are anxious because the state leaders haven't announced when they will change current policy.
There is an opposing voice that says if everyone, regardless of whether they have Shanghai residency, were allowed to apply for high school studies in the city, it would trigger a drastic increase in people moving there to get access to better educational resources. What would you say in response?
We have proposed that only migrant students who have already studied in Shanghai for at least five years be entitled to high school education here. With this requirement in place, we don't think there would be a surge in people migrating to the city.
