167in which large numbers of the rural population have migrated to urban areas.
These changes have led to major policy development in China concerning school
location based on optimizing resource allocation and seeking to diminish the num-
ber of small rural schools. This has led to the development of boarding schools on
a large scale across rural areas in China. The new challenge is how to balance the
efficiency of educational resource allocation with the social impact of school con-
solidation and the social demands of the people.
This chapter discusses patterns of change, the evolution of policy, the develop-
ment of boarding schools, and the issues raised by these developments which con-
centrate capacity in large central primary schools in district centres (Shi 2004 ). It
also discusses the social impact of changes and identifies concerns with childrens’
development.
8.2 Context
School mapping has developed as a result of the needs to plan the implementa-
tion of nine year compulsory education since 1986 (Lewin and Wang 1994). The
Basic Education Law, the Open Door strategy and the One Child policy have led
to significant changes in social and economic development with rapid increases in
household incomes, large scale urbanization, temporary and permanent migration
related to employment, and falling numbers of school children over all. The dif-
ferences between urban and rural have been getting larger as national economic
growth occurs unevenly. These differences are themselves a factor in accelerating
the rural to urban movement of population as more opportunity and wealth are
concentrated in new cities. At the same time the birth control policy has resulted
in a decrease of the school-age population and low utilization rates for schools in
many rural areas.
School mapping to identify current needs and predict future demand has
become an essential resource. The purpose is to optimize the process of adjust-
ment to the changing patterns of demand for schooling and ensure that the process
of merging shrinking schools, reallocating capacity to areas of inward migration,
and managing the consequences of adult migration which has created many “left
behind” children, is efficient and effective.
One important dimension of the transformations that have been taking place is
the large scale development of boarding schools for primary as well as secondary
age children in rural China. This has created many challenges that include imbal-
anced investment between districts, concerns for the physical and psychological
health of young children separated from their parents for long periods, the costs
and logistics of transportation to school over longer distances, and educational
provision for migrant families who do not have residential rights to schooling
where they live (hukou).
China’s development of school mapping builds on experience elsewhere. The
United States developed mapping techniques in the early twentieth century and