Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

REACHING THE MARGINALIZEDGetting left behindBox 3.9: China’s hukou system has restricted education opportunities for migrant childrenIn China, children’s right to education can run upagainst residency requirements that limit accessto schooling.The full extent of rural-urban migration in Chinais unknown. One estimate is that 98 million ruralmigrants live in China’s cities, including 14 millionchildren. Attracted by employment and an escapefrom rural poverty, many migrants live in informaltemporary housing in areas with limited publicservices. Migrant children are among the mosteducationally marginalized in China, largelybecause of the registration system called hukou.Under the hukou system, city schools can onlyadmit students registered as official inhabitantswith a permanent home in the school district.School budgets are based on the number of officialstudents registered by authorities. Individual schoolscan admit unregistered children, but typicallyrequire parents to pay a fee to compensate for thelack of government funds. This arrangement makeseducation unaffordable for many migrant families.Education figures for major cities reflect theconsequences of the hukou system. Only two-thirdsof Beijing’s 370,000 migrant children were enrolledin public schools. Another quarter were reportedas attending unauthorized migrant schools. Theseschools, a response to exclusion from the publiceducation system, are of questionable qualityand some have been forced to close.Chinese authorities, acknowledging the problemsfacing rural migrants, have introduced reforms.City authorities have been required to accommodateholders of rural hukou with temporary residenceand employment permits, reducing the pressureon schools to charge fees. Even so, the childrenof many migrants, including those working inthe informal sector, continue to face restrictedopportunities for education.Sources: Han (2009); Liu, He and Wu (2008);Liang et al. (2008).Remoteness is one of the strongest factors inmarginalization. The poorest households in manyrural areas are the furthest from roads, markets,health services and schools. In Nicaragua, theincidence of extreme poverty is 20% higher in thecentral rural region, where people have to traveltwice as far as the national average to reacha school or health clinic (Ahmed et al., 2007).Distance to school is often a major determinant ofparticipation by ethnic minorities. In India, childrenfrom scheduled tribes, many of them living indispersed communities in remote areas, facesome of the longest treks to school in the country(Wu et al., 2007). In the Lao People’s DemocraticRepublic, schools in rural and predominantlynon-Lao Tai areas are less likely to offer a fullprimary education cycle, and the availability oflower secondary schools is far more restrictedcompared with Lao Tai areas. Only 80% of ruralnon-Lao Tai children have a primary school in theirvillage and only 4% have a lower secondary school.The shares for the majority Lao Tai children aresignificantly higher (88% and 17%, respectively).Such differences help explain why only 46% ofpoor non-Lao Tai girls aged 6 to 12 attend schoolin rural areas, compared with 70% of poor ruralLao Tai girls (King and van de Walle, 2007).Lack of nearby facilities has implications for boththe time and the energy needed to get to school.Country surveys in West Africa from the 1990srevealed high average walking distances in severalcountries, including 7.5 km in Chad, 6.6 km in Mali,5 km in Senegal and 4 km in the Central AfricanRepublic. Distances are likely to be higher thanthese averages in remote areas (Filmer, 2004).Even relatively short distances to schoolcan significantly reduce demand for education.A 2002–2003 survey of 179 villages in thewestern Sahelian region of Chad found that fordistances over a kilometre, enrolment declinedsteeply, with fewer than 10% of children typicallygoing to school. Physical barriers such as riversand forests could considerably increase the timerequired to reach school (Lehman et al., 2007).Girls’ attendance is particularly sensitiveto journey times. Household surveys in manycountries identify distance as a major factorin parents’ decisions to keep daughters outof school (Kane, 2004, and World Bank, 2005d,cited in Theunynck, 2009; Glick, 2008; Huismanand Smits, 2009). Explanations vary, butconcerns over security and domestic labourneeds figure prominently.In the westernSahelian regionof Chad, enrolmentdeclines steeplywhen children liveover a kilometrefrom school177