Syracuse, N.Y. – Yesterday, China’s government announced the achievement of lifting 93 million people out of poverty since 2013. The adult literacy rate rose about 30% in 40 years. Still, educational access remains uneven in China. Nevertheless, several emerging educational platforms give rural students new options for pursuing a more diversified and practical education.
On the one hand, rural schooling still faces three main challenges. First, the number of rural schools has dramatically dropped. Labor migration from rural areas has forced village schools’ closure, contributing to the decrease in Chinese primary schools from 668,685 in 1995 to 201,377 in 2014.
Second, hukou, a residency register system, limits access to schooling. Due to hukou’s restriction, those children of 244 million migrantscan only attend high-charging private schools in parents’ working cities or schools in the rural areas where their hukou originated. The policy deeply affects 14 million migrant students. Wherever they receive their education, they still have to return to their hometown for gaokao, the Chinese College Entrance Exam. Many migrant teenagers drop out of school due to their parents’ continuous relocation.
Third, the higher education acceptance rates remain low, while the China’s Vocational and Technical Education System (VET) is still problematic. According to the Stanford Rural Education Action Program, in China, over 70% of urban students are admitted to college, compared to less than 5% of rural students. For those many failed to enter a college, vocational education is a well-known substitute option. Students with rural backgrounds account for 82% of all students enrolled in vocational schools.
However, VET is far from perfect. For a long time, VET has considered a gathering of failed students, with minimal atmospheres for study but full of violence. Based on the National Center on Education and Economic research, VET programs’ curriculum design is narrow, industry connections are weak, and VET has low status in the public mind.
On the other hand, several emerging education programs have made continuous efforts to close the rural-urban education gap.
Live-stream Classes
For over 16 years, Number Seven Yucai Middle School has been offering live streaming of Chengdu Seventh High School, one of China’s top high schools, for 72,000 students in 248 high schools in poor China areas. The students from both ends of the internet take live streams of classes, assignments, and exams together. The college enrollment rate in those rural schools has increased more than tenfold, with the majority of students successfully had access to higher education and changed their lives.
Kisdoit
Non-profit organization Kisdoit, Chinese name translated as School of Practice, aims to provide a new career development path for 15-18-year-old migrant students. Compared to higher ed, Kisdoit aims not to trained social elites but to “train precious ordinary people” for society. It provides two to three years of general knowledge, skills, and character development classes.
Kisdoit operates on a credit and elective class system similar to that of a university. Students spend half of their time in mandatory physical, psychology education, and individually assigned reading materials. The other half of their time can take diversified classes, including math, English, chemistry, physics. Students can also choose vocational training based on their interests, including communication and collaboration, website editing, programming, PowerPoint production, poster design, baking, crafts, and more.
Niwo (You and Me)
In many rural areas, talking about sex is still firmly taboo. A large number of rural children left by their migrant parents are unable to get sexual guidance, though they usually married early, with very little sexual knowledge.
By providing free curriculum packages and professional support, Niwo sex education program offers courses for all ages from primary to high school. Their sec education packages include understanding the body, gender education, sexual harassment, sexual behavior, sexual diseases, contraception, domestic violence, and more. Since 2015, Niwo has provided free sex education courses to over 2 million people.
AIESEC
Dare to Dream is AIESEC’s most extensive public welfare program in mainland China, aiming to provide rural youth students with global visions. Yearly, Chinese and foreign volunteers conduct winter and summer camps in rural schools. AIESEC aims to offer rural students chances to directly expose to foreign cultures and values, encourage them to realize their dreams through a series of self-discovery lessons. Fifty-three campus teams across Chinese University are running the Dare to Dream program, influencing nearly 100 schools and communities in 34 villages.
The Green Cloud Program
Beijing’s Qing Yun Program began as an educational experiment to select the brightest children, so-called overachievers, from among the city’s 600,000 migrant worker’s children. The program attempts to provide a stable, talent-based education and eventually help the talented students escape the low-level, low-income jobs same as their parents.
The program uses a unique school system. It begins at the age of nine and last to 18, stressing physical training and fostering the humanities and creative spirit. Students will have the opportunity to attend a U.S. university with tuition fully covered by the U.S. Foundation for International Education Development. For 20 years after graduation, students donate 10% of their work income each year to support the program.
After eradicating extreme poverty, China is still facing the critical upgrade of labor quality. The closing rural-urban education gap is a key to social development and still has a long way to go.
- Yuhan Zhao
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