SHANGHAI (AFP) — Shanghai plans to close hundreds of illegal schools for migrant workers' children by 2010 in a bid to integrate at least some of them into the educational system, China's state press and the government said Tuesday.
More than 240 schools educating 380,000 children of migrant workers will be either privately managed with the help of city funds or shut down, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing an education official.
A flood of migrant workers in search of better pay have come to toil in Shanghai's factories and restaurants, and in construction and other low-end service industries over the last decade.
More than three million migrants work in China's most populous city, but Shanghai has never provided adequate educational facilities for the children of those workers, forcing the migrants to set up their own schools.
"It's time to take measures," said Yin Houqing, vice director of the Shanghai Education Commission.
"Without a legal identity and government funding, tight budgets forced many of the migrant schools to have poor education facilities," Yin said.
Human rights groups say migrant schools have existed in legal limbo for years mainly due to the government's refusal to help the workers and their families.
Migrants workers have also long complained that schools fees in Shanghai are too high given monthly wages that averaged about 1,200 yuan (165 dollars) in 2007, according to a recent government survey.
Their plight was highlighted last year when Chinese authorities forcibly closed a school for about 2,000 children of poor migrant workers after the land was designated for re-development.
There are frequent reports of corrupt local government officials and property developers seizing land without providing adequate compensation, and then converting it into residential or industrial use at great profit.
The Shanghai Daily said the city government had allocated 30 million yuan a year since 2004 to improve migrant schools. Currently 57 percent of children of migrant parents in the city are educated in public schools, the report said.
Under the government plan, all middle school students, who are generally aged between 12 and 15, would be integrated into the city's current schools.
Meanwhile, migrant primary schoolhouses will be converted into legal schools and added to Shanghai's public school system as long they can meet city standards, such as employing teachers who hold a legal teaching certificate and have at least five years experience.
Meng Fanqi, headmaster of Bright Migrant School in a western Shanghai suburb, welcomed the news.
"It's a good policy as we can now be partly funded by the government," he said. "This means we will have better campus and better equipment."
Ren Yuan, a public policy professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, approved of the government's action but questioned the amount of time it would take to implement the plan.
"It could be a challenge to get it done in time. I mean it's a bit rush to get all of them done by 2010."
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
