198 9 Transitions and Challenges for the Development of Basic Education
emotional development; the impact on teachers’ quality of life; the quality of the
environment for children’s development; and the educational potentials and ben-
efits. Topography, demography, and macro economic development, and patterns
of migration are all also relevant to strategy on boarding. So also is investment
in small schools. As communication improves, transport reaches out across rural
areas, and information technology connect the remote with the metropolitan it may
be that the original reasons for promoting boarding schools are less compelling.
The issues should be revisited in the light of changing conditions and local cir-
cumstance to establish which pathways forward are most efficient and equitable.
9.2.6 The Education of Migrants, Girls and Orphans
Migration has become a feature of the educational landscape in Tongzhou and
Ansai. In the former migration is from the countryside to Tongzhou and from
Tongzhou into Beijing suburbs. In some places there are now more migrants than
locally born residents. This creates instabilities in patterns of schooling and imbal-
ances between schools and districts. It also generates problems of transition into
junior and senior secondary school since migrants may return to areas of domi-
cile to improve their chances of enrolling in the best secondary schools. Migrants
do not qualify for regular senior secondary schools in Tongzhou, but can enrol
in technical and vocational schools where demand for places is less competitive.
Migrant children may also have difficulty adjusting to Tongzhou schools when
they arrive since standards can vary as well as language dialect and curricula expe-
rience. There is no monitoring system to track migrant children in the county, nor
is there any systematic policy on managing the flows and the supporting the spe-
cial needs of this growing number of children. Teachers in rural schools are now
themselves increasingly likely to be “local migrants” in the sense that they live in
the towns and commute daily to the schools and thus no longer live in the commu-
nities whose children they teach.
In Ansai migration has a different character. Most migration is outbound and is
reflected in falling enrolments. This has generated the need for demographically
driven adjustments to the school system and has hastened the pace at which board-
ing has been introduced on a large scale across the area. Urbanisation is occur-
ring alongside the development of improved infrastructure that has made many
rural areas much more accessible. Outward migration of older children in search
of work is appearing and is affecting secondary school enrolments. The numbers
of “left behind children” have also been increasing as parents seeking work leave
behind school age children with grandparents and other relatives. As in Tongzhou
the changing patterns of migration and their impact on the education system do
not appear to be systematically monitored and managed, and there is no clear view
bout how these can and should develop.
In Zhaojue migration is on a smaller scale than in Tongzhou and Ansai and is
all outbound. As in Ansai, there are some “left behind” children, and it is clear that