1、Migrant students sitting for the National College Entrance Exam, or gaokao, in where they live now or their hometowns has long been a topic of debate among the public. The Ministry of Education recently urged local education authorities to issue plans by the end of the year to enable the children of
2、 migrant workers to take the test in the city where they live. With that, students who study in cities with their migrant worker parents will get fairer opportunities on the cutthroat college entrance exam.Zhang Wan takes a closer look.Currently, students can attend primary and middle schools in cit
3、ies where their parents live and work, but they must return to their hometowns where they have a hukou, or permanent residence permit, to take Chinas National College Entrance Exam.But as Chinese universities have different enrollment score standards for students from different parts of the country,
4、 the scores issued in the hometowns of migrant students are usually higher than they are in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai.Guo Yuanjie from the National Institute of Education Sciences in Beijing says this is an education inequity.Economically developed regions such as Beijing, Shanghai and
5、Guangzhou have high-quality educational resources, meanwhile, these cities have been getting more investment in education. These big cities have better teachers, better educational facilities and provide better international horizons to students. Meanwhile, however, they have lower enrollment scores
6、 for local students.Wang Haitao is president of a training and education consultancy in Beijing. He says thousands of migrant parents have asked him if there is any way that their children who attend school outside Beijing can take the gaokao in the capital.Meanwhile, there are also many Beijing par
7、ents who hope to send their children to other places outside the city for middle school and high school before taking the gaokao in the capital.Many parents in big cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, want to send their children outside these cities for a high school educatio
8、n, then have them come back to the cities to sit for the college entrance exam, because the local schools in other provinces and places usually do a better job of improving the students exam scores. When these students come back to the city to take the gaokao, they can usually improve their exam res
9、ult by 100 more points.According the Ministry of Education, the country has 245 million migrant workers and more than 20 million children who follow their parents to cities amid Chinas rapid industrialization. In addition, there are more than 10 million children who are left behind in rural areas.Ma
10、ny parents say its time to remove the restriction, while others ask if simply removing the restriction for migrant children will enhance education fairness. Wang Haitao talks about his concern.If there is no longer a restriction on students school registrations, more and more students will swarm to
11、big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to sit for the gaokao. However, when all students from outside the cities cannot be accommodated to sit for the exam, some new inequity will emerge.On August 30th, the State Council published a notice setting out general principles on lifting hukou
12、restrictions for children of migrant workers to take the gaokao.Minister of Education Yuan Guiren said although the government has planned to lift the hukou restriction, there are still criteria that migrant parents and students have to meet. The parents must have stable jobs and accommodations in t
13、he city as well as tax and insurance records, and the childrens school registration must show whether they are living and studying in the city or have just come to take the exam.Also, Yuan said, the ministry would allow local governments in different cities and provinces to set their own policies, because population capacities and educational resources varied in different regions.For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.
