From the New York Times:
Under complex rules governing social mobility that are a legacy of Maoist times, the laborers from rural China ” who have streamed to the country’s rich eastern cities by the millions to build their towering skylines, clean and cook for others and do all kinds of work that more prosperous city dwellers shun ” face widespread discrimination.
Their salaries often go unpaid; they are scorned by city dwellers, who often treat them as inferiors; and they lack many of the rights of residents to public services, including the right of their children to attend public schools.
Deprived of access to public education migrants turned to private schools, many of them unlicensed and substandard. Trying to right this wrong, China’s State Council, or cabinet, passed a law in 2003 ordering local governments to provide a public school education for all children under their jurisdictions. But the edict created a huge new burden for local governments without providing the money to carry it out. [Full text]
– Read about the closing of the Jianying Hope School in Shanghai.