Population Mobility and Children’s Education

Abstract

With the acceleration of urbanization, there are continually huge increases in internal population migration from rural areas to metropolitan areas in China that have resulted in not only required work forces to propel the economy, but also in a new social phenomenon—children being left behind in rural areas. The issue of children left behind in rural areas—either in the care of uneducated and incapable grandparents, relatives, neighbors, or alone when their parents go to metropolitan areas to work has become a severe social problem. Through investigating the current conditions of the left-behind children (LBC) in China, this study attempts to discover some of the negative effects that have resulted, particularly on the education of LBC. Based on the empirical study of population mobility and formal education, and left-behindness and family education, practical solutions to the problems that surround the issue of LBC’s education are presented in this study. Included are also measures that must be carried out by governments, schools, parents and local communities. The specific initiatives for the establishment of education programmes particularly tailored to the needs of LBC are proposed. A goal of this paper is to find the effective solutions that might also be useful for the migration population in the other developing countries that have the similar issue.