About schools in Beijing

The main activity I have to carry out in my hosting organization deals with teaching English in some primary schools and in a kindergarten for migrants’ children, i.e. for the kids of people who come from the countryside in order to find a job in Beijing.

It is an hard job for me since I have never taught English before but it is also very interesting and rewarding. First of all, kids are really cute and dealing with them is nice because they are interested in me (probably because I am one of the first western person they have ever met, so I look strange to them) and try to get my attention by saying hello and playing games all the time. Secondly, I have the opportunity to understand some aspects about Beijing educational system. The best schools in China are public and are supported by the government, but you can attend them only if you have a kind of residence document proving that you are an official citizen. Most of migrant workers have difficulty getting this document so their children cannot go to the public schools and have to attend private schools.

Unfortunately, private schools are not as good as public ones, they hang over thanks to tuitions and private donations so that they have not lots of facilities and their teachers are not very well trained. Most of the students attending these schools do not receive a good education so they are not able to find a good job and create a better life.

One of the most interesting angles of this educational system for migrant’s children is the variety of the schools. Some of them are really poor and have not very experienced teachers; in fact On action (the NGO where I work) carries out lots of activities with teachers in order to train them and make them relax and have fun. Visiting this kind of schools is not easy from a psychological point of view because they give an idea of a place in which underprivileged people gather together to help each other, as if they were completely out of society. But, there are also better and richer schools for migrant’s children, obviously they are quite expensive so only a few people can afford them. In my opinion this variety shows how many people are kept away from a good education: not only very poor people who probably cannot even imagine a brighter future for themselves but also a kind of middle-class people who could be much more demanding.

Many Chinese people are convinced that this kind of educational system is unfair, but they do not know what they want since they do not have a clear solution to fight against this situation. Without doubt it is a very complicated problem because of the huge population living in Beijing, but they should think carefully about how to deal with this unfair situation because soon or later migrant workers could raise their voice in order to express their own desires.