China eases restrictions on migrants attending gaokao

Migrants' children will be allowed to sit college entrance exams in Chinese cities where their parents work, lifting a ban caused by household registration.

Northeast China's Heilongjiang and eastern Anhui and Jiangsu provinces will lift the ban next year, local governments confirmed.

Children of migrant workers working in Anhui will be able to take national college entrance exams, or "gaokao," there without having to return to the place where their household registration is held.

They will have equal rights as local exam students, only if they have attended high schools in the province for three consecutive years.

About 2,000 migrant students attend high schools in Anhui, and 300 of them are expected to take gaokao in the province, according to local government statistics.

Currently, China has nearly 20 million rural children aged under 14 who have followed their migrant-worker parents to cities, according to the China Children and Teenagers' Fund.

The Chinese mainland's 32 provincial-level authorities were required in August to submit plans on migrants attending gaokao before the end of the year, according to the Ministry of Education.

However, comparing to Anhui and Heilongjiang provinces, the public is expecting concrete moves from megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, where a majority of Chinese migrant workers are.

Local parents in megacities are upset and expect fierce competition as more students will be vying for scarce educational resources and the competitive college entrance quota.

Shanghai has not given a clear date for the formation of the plan, but the local government will implement a points-based system. Children of migrants who obtain adequate points will qualify to attend gaokao in Shanghai. Points accumulation includes the number of working years, property and years of social security payments.