Education

Photo credit: Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM).

Through a process of deduction, this information alone clearly suggests that families within the floating population are faced with numerous additional obstacles in moving as an entire family to urban areas.  Yet further studies show us there are even more concerning issues faced by migrant families in China’s floating population well beyond a mere calculation of ease versus extra hassle.  James Irwin in his article “China's Migrant Children Fall Through the Cracks,” addresses the lacking accessibility of official education options for the children of migrant workers living in Chinese cities.  In his assessment of this issue Irwin outlines the implementation of unlicensed migrant children’s schools, which despite offering at least some form of educational opportunity turn away hundreds of applicants each year due to insufficient resources.  These unofficial schools, deemed so for their technically unrecognized status in operating without a government permit, also pose numerous problematic logistical concerns for migrants who do send their children to these schools as their only option.  The maintaining of reliable school records, unofficial transportation that can often take children through three or more bus changes over several hours to reach school and the burden on parents to provide all necessary funding and supplies, all pose major setbacks for migrant families not possessing official urban residency status that wish to send their children to school (Irwin 2000).

Another major issue Irwin addresses with regards to the education of children in China’s floating population, is negative impact on confidence in educational abilities this lack of accessible schooling has had on the children of migrant families.  In many cases, as Irwin notes, a legitimately negative sense of being segregated with regards to education or the all too often missed lapses of time in school, create even further personal setbacks to the educational progress of these children.  In turn, official government interaction with these unofficial migrant primary schools has been recorded as negative at best and often results in such detrimental impacts as fines or short term closure based on regulation violations.  While such government actions may seem menial, the impacts on the already strained school budgets serve only to inflict inconsistency and other set backs on the educational experience of the students attending these schools (Irwin 2000).