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SHANGHAI: Shanghai plans to close hundreds of illegal schools for
migrant workers’ children by 2010 in a bid to integrate at least
some of them into the education system, state press reported on
Tuesday.
More than 240 schools educating the children of
migrant workers will be either privately managed with the help of
city funds or shut down, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing an
education official.
Over the last decade, a flood of migrant workers
in search of better salaries have come to toil in Shanghai’s
factories, restaurants and in construction and other low-end service
industries.
More than three million migrants now work in
China’s most populous city, but it has never provided adequate
educational facilities for their children, forcing the workers to
set up their own schools.
Human rights groups say that migrant schools
have existed in legal limbo mainly because of the government’s
refusal to help the workers and their families.
But the newspaper said the city government had
allocated 30 million yuan ($4.1 million) a year to improve migrant
schools.
Currently 57 percent of migrant children are
educated in public schools, it said.
Their plight was highlighted last year in
Shanghai when Chinese authorities forcibly shut down a school for
around 2,000 children of poor migrant workers after the land was
designated for redevelopment.
There are frequent reports of corrupt local
government officials and property developers seizing land without
providing inadequate compensation, and then converting it into
residential or industrial use at great profit.
-- AFP
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