China is to tie education spending to children’s place of residence for the first time, in a bid to end a system detrimental to migrants that threatens to leave the country with an ill-educated urban underclass.
The reform, announced this month, comes after the official migrant population fell for the first time since the early 1980s, when the switch to a market economy drew peasants from the poor countryside to seek jobs in the cities.
Allocation of central government education grants to where children reside, rather than where they are registered, will help cities meet growing social costs — although critics say the reform is not enough to bridge the spending gap in the biggest and most attractive cities, where millions of migrant children struggle to acheive a basic education.