When Zhu Haoqiang arrived in Shanghai last September, he was excited to be coming to live with his parents in China's biggest city.

The 14-year-old boy had been separated from his parents since he was little when they left to work 700 kilometers from his home in Anhui Province.

But as he was starting to get a taste of family life, it ended again. Zhu's mother, who worked at a clothing factory, lost her job when the global financial crisis hit exports. Living costs became too high for the family so Zhu and his mother moved back to their hometown.

Like many families, they returned after years of living and for the children, studying in the cities.

"It’s okay to come back here," says Zhu, now a grade seven student in Wangzhai Secondary School in Wangdian County, Fuyang. "I didn’t stay in Shanghai long enough for it to feel difficult to readjust to life here."

But he admits he misses school in Shanghai, though he only studied at a migrant school. "I miss the environment the most, the living and the school environment, both are very nice in Shanghai," Zhu says.

As tens of thousands of manufacturing companies collapsed amid slowing demand, an estimated 20 million migrants have lost their jobs in the cities and many have returned to their hometowns.

In Anhui, one of the provinces with the most migrant workers, 6.2 million returned before the Chinese New Year, says the provincial governor Wang Sanyun.

The rush back to their rural homes poses no big problems for the education of their children, says Tian Shimin, official of the provincial education bureau. "In our experience, migrants who take their child are those who have established very stable lives in the cities," Tian says.

With years of savings, Zhu's parents thought they could make a home in Shanghai. His father, a construction worker, who used to make a little more than 2,000 yuan a month and his mother 1,000 yuan, decided to bring their son to live with them in suburban Shanghai.

"I missed my parents a lot when I was back in our hometown," Zhu says. Now his father struggles on alone in Shanghai, thanks to the government's massive construction projects.

Many children are left behind in the countryside when their parents move to the cities to seek better jobs. In Anhui alone, more than 2.7 million are left behind, according to the provincial education bureau, and more than 30 percent of students below grade nine (usually below age 15) have parents in the cities.

For those with rural residency, their school days in the cities are nothing but a short-lived dream as they don't have a city huhou―household registration.

China's household registration system, set up in 1958 to control its citizens' movements, divided its countrymen into two groups: urban and rural residents. Social security welfare systems are based on the household registration system. Rural dwellers were denied access to public services including education, and medical care in the cities.

The 9-year compulsory education is free for both urban and rural kids. But, after that, children with city residency have access to government-subsidized schooling, whereas the migrant children must have to return to their hometowns if they want to continue high school education.

So even with a good family income, Yang Xiao's parents still had to send her back to her hometown in Anhui for school.

Yang, 16, was born and brought up in Shanghai. Dressed in the streetwise fashion of many city teenagers, Yang says she feels despised there. "People look down on you when you don't speak their dialect," she says. She paid almost 2,000 yuan for tuition in a private secondary school in suburban Baoshan District, Shanghai.

Mostly situated on the urban fringes, the migrant schools are usually built on abandoned land or in deserted factories. But cities like Shanghai and Beijing saw the safety risks of these unauthorized schools and began to take control.

According to the Shanghai education commission, all migrant children in the city of school age will be enrolled in local public schools or government-subsidized private schools by 2010.

But with no local residency, Yang cannot take exams to go to high school there. She must go back to where her residency is and takes the exams there if she wants to continue her education.

Now a student in Fuyang No. 16 Secondary School, Yang can barely move in her classroom where 85 students are squeezed in. Desks are pushed nearly to the blackboard in the front of the classroom with little elbow room.

Each year, the school receives around 200 students who come back to take the high school entry exam. Because the school has limited classrooms and teachers, the extra students must be squeezed in, says Tang Haiping, the school principal.

Yang's class in Shanghai had only 38 students while her class in Anhui has 85. Class sizes are just one of the problems of rural education. Most schools in rural areas don't have enough teachers, and, if they have teaching equipment, it is usually out of date, says Tang.

Normal university students usually choose to apply for teaching jobs in the cities where the facilities are up-to-date and salaries good. Rural schools, especially in poor remote areas, have difficulties attracting teachers.

"The most difficult part is managing the left-behind students," says Tang. Because they are usually left with their grandparents and seldom communicate with their parents, it is hard to know what's on their minds. "We've had several cases of students disappeared to look for jobs in the city."

The central government has stepped up measures to address the education gap between rural and urban China. In 2006, the government revised the Compulsory Education Law and reiterated the obligation of city governments to provide education to migrant children.

The country's nine-year compulsory education system, which has long subsisted on government funding and comprises six-year free primary education and three-year secondary education, is provided for children aged 6 to 15.

Since 2007, the central government has exempted all students in rural areas from fees in nine-year compulsory education, for which it pays 300 to 500 yuan per student each year.

"Shanghai probably has the most favorable education policies for migrant children," says Liu Wenjie, of the Social Development Bureau, education department in Shanghai's Pudong district.

Pudong was selected as a pilot area, where 13 primary schools for migrant children were transformed into government-funded schools last year. Liu says the Pudong district government pays 2,000 yuan a year for each migrant student enrolled in local elementary, migrant or public schools.

Gao Huizi, a fifth grader in Pudong Dabieshan Migrant Elementary School, also born and brought up in Shanghai, has never known her hometown. Her mother, Wang Lan, lost her job in a clothing factory in Shanghai last year, but decided to stay.

The Pudong government pays Gao's tuition. "The living costs are higher than our hometown in Shandong, but we get by," says Wang. "It's okay to for us to struggle a bit if she can get a much better education here," she says. "I just want to make sure she gets a good education so she doesn't end up like us."

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2009)