Education for All China

Student Support Systems

Shanghai has turned its attention in recent years to ensuring greater access to education for all students, as well as greater support
for struggling students. By 2020, Shanghai hopes to greatly reduce the student workload so that students are better able to thrive
in the school environment, as well as create universal free preschool programs to give students a head start for primary school, or
put them on even footing with children who attend private preschools.
The largest group of struggling students in China is children of migrant workers, who have not until recently been entitled to
public education in the jurisdictions to which their parents migrate. Roughly 20% of Chinese students are the children of migrant
workers. Two-thirds of those children live in cities with their parents, but the rest remain in rural villages without their parents.
Ensuring educational achievement among this population is one of Chinas main concerns. In 2002, the Chinese government
made it a policy that the education of migrant children is the responsibility of the city in which they live. Shanghai has a large
proportion of migrant people living and working in the city, which has contributed to its economic expansion. Unlike the
majority of other cities in China, Shanghai recognizes the importance of making sure that this large minority of students gets a
quality education. Therefore, Shanghai has adopted a policy of integration, allowing migrant children to attend public schools
alongside the children of Shanghai citizens.
Chinas schools also provide a variety of options to students with special educational needs. These include special schools and/or
classes to provide extra help in mainstream classrooms. In 1986, the government mandated that students with special needs must
attend school for nine years as do children without special needs. Because some regions do not have the resources to provide
special schools or classes for these students, a policy of suiban jiudu has emerged, roughly translating as Chinas inclusion.
Under this policy, regular schools would formulate special classes and teachers would make efforts to serve students with special
needs in mainstream classes as well. This policy was initially adopted in the poor, rural areas of China and continues in areas
where special needs cannot be formally provided for. However, the policy remains largely informal and rural teachers are not
actually trained to provide special needs education to these students. A 2004 report from Chinas Ministry of Education indicates
that in 1996-97 (the most recent year for which they provided data), 55.7% of students with special needs were educated in
mainstream schools. This differs somewhat in Shanghai. The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission is working to develop
formal special education pathways in mainstream and special schools, including the development of separate curricula and
teaching materials for students with special needs. They have also formulated formal certificates of special education teacher
training, and exempted special education schools from paying education fees or from paying for textbooks. In 2014, the Shanghai
Education Commission announced plans to offer personalized education to children with disabilities who receive medical care. In
this program, teachers and doctors work together to design a unique curriculum for each child based on their needs. Schools in
this program are also assigned a community doctor who pays regular visits and offers help to the teachers and children who
receive hospital check-ups, which are more comprehensive than those usually done in schools. Shanghai has 9,000 registered
disabled students with conditions including blindness, deafness, autism, learning difficulties and Downs syndrome.
Low-Performing Schools
The Chinese have a long tradition of Key Schools, or schools that receive greater resources than other schools, and are more
selective. Because this system creates educational inequality, in the past few decades it has been on the decline. In the mid-1990s,
Shanghai eliminated Key Schools by requiring students to attend their local school at the primary and lower secondary level,
rather than compete for limited spots at local Key Schools. In response to parent concerns, this policy was modified somewhat by
allowing students to attend schools in other neighborhoods if they were willing to pay a sponsorship fee. A new emphasis on
neighborhood attendance has also had an impact on instruction; teachers were used to having fairly homogenous classrooms in
regard to ability prior to this policy. Now teachers must undertake the more difficult task of teaching heterogeneous classrooms,

and have stepped up to the challenge in most cases. Finally, neighborhood attendance has obviated the need for post-primary
school exams, so students may spend more time learning and less time cramming in the early years of their education.
Shanghai has also been a leader in addressing the needs of low-performing schools. Several rounds of school renovations and
restructurings have occurred since the 1980s; in addition to pouring in capital to fix buildings and purchase resources, the
government has also sought to strengthen teaching staff and appoint competent principals and has eliminated tuition and supply
fees for all students. Further efforts have included practicing positive discrimination in determining funding, transferring
successful teachers to low-performing schools, and performing several rounds of renovations and school closings in order to
bring all school physical resources up to an acceptable level. Finally, the Shanghai government has encouraged schools to take
care of and learn from one another by establishing clusters of schools with different performance levels; creating pairs of urban
and rural schools; requiring good schools to take over the administration of weak schools; and sending in hand-picked
leaders and teachers to transfer good management practices