Reasons to study abroad
During the two years of working in her present job, Ms. Lu has met various teenage Chinese students and their parents, who listed all sorts of reasons that the children had to be sent abroad.
"Too tiresome" is the complaint Lu has heard the most often. She has heard about primary school students who had to stay up till midnight to finish their homework, merely consisting of repeated copying.
Even worse, Chinese students are often under pressure to pay to attend private tutorials from their own teachers or risk not having access to the knowledge their teachers purposefully conceal in classes.
One mother told Lu that the current education system in China would "kill her boy," noting her sceptical son habitually loves directly questioning teachers in class, an act traditionally considered improper and disrespectful to teachers.
"For example, the teacher would say 'science and technology are the primary productivity,' but my son would argue that "science brings about pollution, too.' Teachers later just ignored my child," she said.
She initially planned to put up with how things stood and came close to spending three million yuan (US$483.87 thousand) on a new house near the boy's school. Yet the mother soon sobered up and realized the same amount of money could move her son abroad to receive a better education.
The irrational hukou (i.e. household registration) system is another major factor driving young students overseas.
A self-professed "helpless mother" said she and her husband both worked in multinational companies in Beijing. They both make good money, but neither of them has a Beijing hukou, nor does their daughter. Under the present policy, the 16-year-old will have to go back to the parents' hometown to take her college entrance exam.
The parents could not afford to leave Beijing to accompany their daughter during her final year in high school, nor do they think the girl could adapt to a new curriculum even if they do go back. As they saw no other way out, the parents intended to send the girl overseas.
A better environment, humanity and food safety are also among the main reasons why Chinese parents rush to send their children abroad.
New restrictions
China's educational authorities did not fail to notice more and more minors leaving the country in favor of overseas schooling. A Ministry of Education's draft regulation dated October of last year has clearly stated that "overseas education agents can only provide services to those who have finished their compulsory education."
Once the regulation takes effect, all primary and junior middle school students in China can no longer pursue studies abroad via education agents. But education insiders have noticed that the Education Ministry has kept withdrawing its baseline in the past decade.
In regards to the new regulation, education agents have remained indifferent since students who plan to go overseas at a younger age are either from wealthy or prominent families. They can bypass the aforementioned education agents and land overseas by means of capital and technology emigration.
Nonetheless, even education agents do not support primary and junior middle school students going abroad. New Oriental has found some ten percent of such students have social difficulties while living in foreign countries.
A text going around among parents who plan to send their children abroad reads:
"I don't expect my children to attend renowned universities. I just expect they can live like us -- going to school by ourselves, showing no fear when meeting strangers, no need to dodge cars because they dodge us, no apple-polishing to teachers, having a world with a blue sky, white clouds, clean air and safe food. That's all."
But these abovementioned seemingly simple demands have become a luxury good in China.
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