Mainland vocational school gives disruptive students a second chance to learn

At the school founded by Yang Changhong, students go through a stringent daily regimen of training. Their military-style uniform symbolises the special type of education they are in for.

The school, located on the outskirts of Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou, caters for at-risk youths - students predominantly from impoverished rural areas with behavioural or academic problems. Often neglected in mainstream schools, they are prone to going astray. Some have broken the law.

For a decade, Yang has been determined to give them a second chance. Growing up in a remote village in the province, he witnessed many fellow youngsters, often deprived of attention from their parents who had gone to the cities to work, quit school and then go astray.

"Many students from villages do not treasure the chance of studying and quit easily," he says.

Soon after graduating from Guizhou Radio and Television University in 2004, he set up the school by selling his family's means of support - a few pigs and cows - to give vulnerable youths an educational opportunity. Empathy for village children is his driving force, he says during a recent trip to Hong Kong to visit the Lantau-based Christian Zheng Sheng College that tries to reform young drug offenders.

His co-educational residential school, the Guiyang Xingzhi Science and Technology Vocational School, is located in a mountainous area and is in bad physical shape. With an initial investment of only 10,000 yuan (HK$12,600), Yang could not afford a permanent site, he says.