VA
Insights

Since February 2018, Venture Avenue has started the China entry feasibility study for Magic Bus, an NGO based in India dedicated to improving education for underprivileged youths. The study focuses on discovering the most urgent needs for education for rural youths or migrant children in urban areas as well as positioning Magic Bus’s offerings in China. In this article, we would like to share our key observation and thoughts with regard to these topics.

Rural Education and Migrant Children Education in China
Rural and migrant children have been in a vulnerable position in terms of receiving education. While the 9-year compulsory education coverage reached 93.6% in 2017, dropout is more commonly seen among middle school students, migrant and left-behind children. The reason for leaving schools during compulsory education has changed: majority of the students drop out of school by their choices due to dislike of schools or learning difficulties, rather than financial difficulties.

With low-quality education, rural children have difficulty or lose interest in study. The idea of “education is useless” prevails in certain rural areas, as “study cannot guarantee good grades for good school, cannot lead to good employment, cannot ensure good pay”. As a result, some students spend most of their after-class time working in local factories, while some even choose to drop out of middle or high school for work. Parents may remain silent to or even support such decision.

For migrant children to receive education in cities, challenges exist as to whether they can enter, adapt to and stay in urban schools. As required by national policies, about 80% of migrant children are placed in public schools for compulsory education. However, the thresholds remain high for migrant children to enter public schools and the total expenditure for urban education is also high. As the education of one place may differ a lot from another and students need sufficient continuity in their study, migrant children remain disadvantaged at all levels of study, when compared to local students, and would need extra care and help with their study and mental health. Moreover, it may be difficult for migrant children to take high school and college entrance exam in cities or to get admitted to good schools, so many migrant children have to return to rural hometowns for education or drop out for work at middle or high school stage, especially for those in developed cities with tightening population policies.

After a general review of rural and migrant children education, let’s have a look at the situation of related nonprofit organizations (“NPOs”) and programmes.

General Situation of Related Nonprofit Organizations
Education receives most attention from the nonprofit sector in China: not only has it attracted most amount of social donation, it is also the top 2 sector which most NPOs are dedicated to.

Most NPOs working on education serve rural children, but they mostly target at the younger ones. There are many programmes for primary school students, but few for middle or high school. Wispring Education Development Foundation, dedicated to extensive support for rural education in Hunan Province, is one of the few organizations that serve middle and high school students and even connect with rural students in college.

Migrant children were also key service targets of many NPOs working on education. However, as migrant children become scattered and invisible in urban areas, especially big developed cities, some programmes can no longer proceed. Given the diverse policies regarding migrant children in different cities and the larger number of migrant children at primary school level, organizations or programmes usually work locally and target at primary school kids.

Challenges for Related Nonprofit Organizations
Under the general “exam-oriented” educational atmosphere of in China, overwhelming majority of education bureaus, schools and parents in rural areas still measure education outcome with exam grades only. Therefore, rural areas have very limited space for programmes not directly linked to exam subjects, e.g. programmes for students’ all-round development. It may still be possible to work with primary schools, but it is extremely difficult for middle or high schools, especially the grades facing high school or college entrance exams. Whether a school is open to programmes not for exam subjects is largely depending on the mindset and education philosophy of local government leaders and the headmaster. As a result, rural education NPOs would, on one hand, prefer to implement programmes in primary schools and, on the other hand, identify and work with local governments or schools that can understand and agree with programme visions.

For programmes that need teachers or trainers to deliver, the lack of human resource is the primary issue. There are very limited number of teachers for rural or migrant-only schools, who already shoulder heavy teaching burden. Therefore, it is usually very difficult for teachers to have time, energy or motivation to take on extra work. More and more NPOs and programme teams have realized this problem and taken different actions. For instance, Growing Home designed an educational product that requires little effort by teachers, allowing students in rural boarding schools to hear bedtime stories; Adream not only emphasizes training for the trainers/teachers, but also organizes relevant workshops for decision-makers in the education system that are in a better position to motivate teachers; PEER arranges resident volunteers at schools to carry out activities and to engage teachers in programme implementation. At the same time, there are increasing nonprofit programmes dedicated to supporting or funding rural teachers.

With current policies, about 80% migrant children are scattered in different public schools in urban areas, while the number of migrant schools have been sharply decreased in certain big cities. Quite a few migrant children thus can no longer continue their study in urban areas and have to return to hometown for schools, especially for those in middle and high schools. Consequentially, it is hard and costly for NPOs, which usually have very limited resource, to identify and gather migrant children to provide needed, effective and long-term support. The divergence of different places’ policies also hinders the replication and scale-up of relevant programmes.

Room for Exploration by Related Nonprofit Organizations
Under the “exam-oriented” educational system, there will aways be a group of students that have poorer grades and are thus not able to enter general high schools or colleges. Since lots of rural and migrant children fall within this group, VA considers it necessary and meaningful for NPOs to explore “what is the most needed support for such group of students”, “what educational content can make such students’ time in schools more valuable for them”. As some schools also start to look for what value they can create for such group of students, NPOs may have good partners to work with.

A large number of students in vocational schools have rural or migrant background. Given the educational and social atmosphere in China, vocational education has always been considered an “inferior option”. As a result, many insiders of the vocational education system, including headmasters, teachers, students and parents, have very low self-esteem of themselves. In VA’s point of view, NPOs may explore how to help both students and other insiders in vocational schools to form positive recognition of and have confidence in themselves, while the latter will be able to better empower students. Moreover, vocational schools may not have provided sufficient guidance to foster students’ understanding of and employability skills for working in real life. Consequentially, students fail to fit in working environment and thus change jobs frequently, while enterprises and factories cannot have long-term supply of human resource and are not satisfied with students’ communication, teamwork and other employability skills. VA considers that NPOs may provide relevant educational programmes and teaching support. As some enterprises are actively seeking cooperation, NPOs may opt to partner with them and vocational schools.

For both rural and migrant education, most of current research and study focus on students at the stage of compulsory education, i.e. primary and middle school education, especially the former. There is limited detailed statistics and analysis about students at the stage of middle or high school specifically. VA believes that relevant research and analysis is the foundation of effective contribution for serviced targets. NPOs may utilize their knowledge of, familiarity with and access to working on rural and migrant education to collaborate with relevant research teams or institutes, so as to generate statistics and analysis and thus to guide the development and exploration by relevant parties.

Reference
China Charity Information Platform
2016 China Charitable Donation Report
Study of The Current Status and Development of China Education NPOs (2013)
2017 China Rural Education Development Report
“Tough fight against dropouts.” China Youth Daily: http://zqb.cyol.com/html/2018-02/23/nw.D110000zgqnb_20180223_7-01.htm
“New outcome of solutions to hot issues on compulsory education.” China Education Daily: http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/201802/t20180227_327865.html