Educators have welcomed a move by authorities in China to wave school fees for the children of rural workers living in cities.

The move comes amid growing concerns that rural children especially young girls are missing out on quality education despite the mandatory nine year schooling system.

Presenter: Claudette Werden
Speakers: Yu Xiaodong - rural educator with NGO ActionAid; Professor Fei Guo, Macquarie University based demographer

WERDEN: For children in China, its compulsory to attend school for nine years. This week at a cabinet meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao, the decision was made to wave school fees for all students living in the city for those nine years of education. The meeting made special mention of children of so-called migrant workers, labourers who work in the cities but come from China's poorer rural areas. Their children are either left behind, or attend unofficial and poorly funded private migrant schools .

China's central government says a better effort should be made to ensure children of migrant workers receive proper schooling in the cities. Yu Xiaodong is a rural educator with the non-government organisation ActionAid. He's welcomed this week's cabinet decision.

XIAODONG: The problem of leftover kids is very serious problem, if the kids cannot go with their parents and receive education in cities, they have to left over back home that creates a lot of problem because they cannot stay with their parents and many of the left over kids already have psychological problems and also their grades tend to be lower than those kids staying with their parents in rural areas so if they have access to education in the city level it definitely help to solve this problem.

WERDEN: Macquarie University based demographer Professor Fei Guo says China's overall literacy rate is high but the drop out rate for young girls in rural areas has increased.

Professor Guo says while nine years of education is mandatory across all China, some regional authorities are reluctant to enforce the ruling which has allowed girls to leave school early.

GUO: A lot of them are attracted by the job and fast money they can earn in factories. In southern China they set up a quite systematic recrutiment system in the rural areas to recruit young girls to work in factories in assembly lines in the very low skilled jobs. This is one quite noticeable trend in number of interior provinces like Sichauan province, Hunan province fore example. If you do read the migration literature you do notice a pattern called the feminisation of the migrants.

WERDEN: Central authorities are also aiming to improve the quality of education in rural areas. But Yu Xiaodong says their attempts have had some uninteneded results.

XIAODONG: I think in 2007 the government concentrated all the education resources to the township schools they closed up all the village schools and concentrated all the resources and teachers in the township schools and this policy is aimed to increase the education quality in these schools but sometimes it causes other problems in the rural areas many kids have to travel a long time to go to the school and sometimes have to sleep in dormitories causing more problems for parents. Our general position is that it should be more flexible, in many cases some village schools have quite good facilities.