186 8 School Mapping and Boarding in the Context ...
in these schools and better equip their children for future. Children in remote areas
can now enjoy better conditions and teaching and learning after mergers of com-
plete and central schools with better facilities, teachers and school management.
Forth, boarding children have to do things by themselves which helps foster
their independent abilities. Living with schoolmates is also helpful to develop their
communication and cooperative abilities. The timetabled life helps to develop their
better living skills and study habits and self-control in a collective environment.
Fifth, boarding schools have solved the problem of safety of daily commut-
ing. Before the children live far away from school as they live very scattered, they
spent longer time on road. When road condition were not good, there are danger
factors and safety problems. When they are in boarding school these problems can
be solved to a large extent.
Sixth, left-behind children may be in better care. Some investigation shows
that, there are 58 million left-behind children in rural areas. Most of them (80 %)
are cared by their grandparents, 13 % by relatives and friends, 7.3 % no cer-
tain guardian or without guardian. Education and care of left-behind children is
becoming a social problem in rural areas. At boarding school, these children’s life
and study are cared by school teachers and staff and some of their parents anxie-
ties may be relieved.
8.6.2 Issues and Disadvantages Emerged
On the downside there are several disadvantages of the merger process which are
widely discussed. There are at least eight issues.
First, it is difficult to find school age children to attend the nearest school if
the service radius of rural primary school is less than 3 km as the department of
education recommends. School mergers have made the service radius larger and
sometimes the distances unreasonable. Research conducted in 177 mid-western
counties and villages found the average distance of the sampled students is now
4.8 km and 66 % of travel to school on foot. 30 % parents and 27 % students
thought attending school was inconvenient. Though there are many reasons for
dropout long distances to school is a disincentive especially in rural and unde-
veloped mountainous areas (Zhang 2010 ). Wang’s research (2008) in a county
in Hebei province indicates that 90 % of parents of young children shuttle their
children to up to 4 times everyday because of concerns for transport and safety.
About 70 % of senior grade primary students and 80 % junior secondary students
go to schools by bicycle; 47 % of junior secondary students traveled more than
20 km on the way back and forth every day because there is no food canteen in
schools. The large scale consolidation of schools has meant more time and more
costs spent on travelling, and less time for school work. It may have contributed to
rising dropout rates in some areas (Wang and Yang 2008 ).
Second, we have noted that expenses resulted from living in school are not a
small overhead for the majority of rural families. The national “two exemptions