Rural residents in China today face at least two key decisions: a) where to live and work; and b) where to send their children to school. In this paper we study the second decision: should a rural parent send their child to a public rural school or have him or her attend a private migrant school in the city. While there is an existing literature on the impact of this decision on student academic performance, one of the main shortcomings of current studies is that the data that are used to analyse this issue are not fully comparable. To fill the gap, we collected data on the educational performance of both migrant students who were born in and come from specific source communities (prefecture) in rural China and students who are in rural public schools in the same source communities. Specifically, the dataset facilitates our effort to measure and identity the academic gap between the students in private migrant schools in Shanghai and Suzhou and those in the public rural schools in Anhui. We also seek to identify different sources of the gap, including selection effects and observable school quality effects. According to the results of the analysis, there is a large gap. Students in public rural schools outperform students in private migrant schools by more than one standard deviation (SD). We found that selection effects only account for a small part of this gap. Both school facility effects and teacher effects explain the achievement gap of the students from the two types of schools, although these effects occur in opposite directions.

This article reports on research conducted to investigate student confidence in reading by collecting data from 135 primary schools in rural China. In the survey, we adopted the PIRLS scales of confidence in reading and reading skills test items. Our analysis shows that compared to the other countries and regions, rural China ranks last with regard to student confidence in reading and reading achievement. The correlation analysis reveals that in rural China there is a strong correlation between student confidence in reading and reading achievement. Additionally, school and teacher factors are associated with student confidence in reading. Specifically, having an accessible classroom library is associated with higher reading confidence, especially among the poor readers. Teacher instruction in reading correlates with higher confidence in readers for high achievers. Our findings indicate that the government should develop effective policies to improve student confidence in reading and reading skills in rural China.

This paper aims to explore and quantify the reading achievement of primary school students from three different regions in rural China. Using survey data on 23,143 students from Shaanxi, Guizhou, and Jiangxi provinces, we find although gaps in student reading achievement exist among the three sample provinces, all sample students exhibit low levels of reading achievement. Compared to students from other countries that participated in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reading tests, our sample students from rural China ranked last. Our regression analysis documented strong correlations between reading achievement and maths performance exist among the sample students in rural China. Additionally, we find male students, students with rural household registration, boarding students, and students from relatively poor families are more susceptible to having worse reading outcomes. Overall, our findings indicate the government should develop more effective policies to support reading skill development in China, especially in rural areas.

Affecting more than one billion people around the world, neglected tropical diseases are a group of diseases which mainly occur in poor populations living in tropical and subtropical environments. Although considered a middle-income country, neglected diseases persist in many rural areas of China. Neurocysticercosis (NCC), an infection caused when the larvae of the tapeworm Taenia solium (T. solium) enters the human brain, is a prime example of this. Infection can lead to seizures, severe headaches, decreased cognitive abilities and other debilitating neurologic symptoms. The overall goal of our study is to understand the nature of NCC in China as well as to identify possible interventions that might be useful for helping to control or eradicate the disease. To meet this goal, we use a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative survey data with observational and interview-based qualitative data. We find a significant prevalence of neurocysticercosis in Tibetan school age children in western Sichuan. We identify three interventions with high potential for stopping the spread of the disease: regular composting of human feces, installing sanitation stations outside of school bathrooms to encourage hand washing, and working through the local veterinary networks to administer the newly developed porcine T. solium vaccine.

Keywords: Neurocysticercosis (NCC), tapeworms, cognitive ability, parasites

An increasing number of policymakers in developing countries have made the mass expansion of upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) a top priority. The goal of this study is to examine whether VET fulfills the objectove of building skills and abilities along multiple dimensions and further identify which school-level factors help vocational students build these skills and abilities. To fulfill this goal, we analyzed representative, longitudinal data that we collected on more than 12,000 students from 118 schools in once province of central China. First, descriptive analysis shows approximately 90% of VET students do not make any gains in vocational or general skills. In addition, negative behaviors (misbehavior in the classroom, anti-social behavior, and other risky behaviors) are highly prevalent among VET students. A nontrivial proportion of student internships also fail to meet minimum government requirements for student safety and well-being. Perhaps as a result of these outcomes, more than 60% of students express dissatisfaction with their VET programs, as evidenced by eitehr self-reports or dropping out. Finally, using a multi-level model, we find that school inputs (such as school size, teacher qualifications, and per pupil expenditure) are not correlated with vocational and general skill at the end of the school year, or student dropout in the academic year.

There is a significant gap in academic achievement between rural and urban students in China. Policymakers have sought to close this gap by improving the quality of teaching in rural areas through teacher professional development (PD) programs. However, there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of such programs. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a PD program-National Teacher Training Program (NTTP)  and find that the NTTP has no effect on math achievement. We also find that while the program has a positive effect on math teaching knowledge of teachers, it has no significant effect on teaching practices in the classroom. Taken together, these results indicate that teachers may have improved their knowledge for teaching from NTTP, but did not apply what they learned to improve teaching practices or student learning.

The debate over whether boarding school is beneficial for students still exists in both developing and developed countries. In rural China, as a result of a national school merger program that began in 2001, the number of boarding students has increased dramatically. Little research has been done, however, to measure how boarding status may be correlated with nutrition, health and educational outcomes. In this paper, we compare the outcomes of boarding to those of non-boarding students using a large, aggregate dataset that includes 59 rural counties across five provinces in China. We fi nd that for all outcomes boarding students perform worse than non-boarding students. Despite these differences, the absolute levels of all outcomes are low for both boarding and non-boarding students, indicating a need for new policies that will target all rural students regardless of their boarding status.

Abstract: China’s rapid development and urbanization has induced large numbers of rural residents to migrate from their homes in the countryside to urban areas in search of higher wages. It is estimated that there are more than 60 million left behind children (LBCs) remain in the countryside after their parents migrate. This paper examines the changes in mental health before and after the parents of fourth and fifth grade students out- or return-migrate. We draw on a panel dataset collected by the authors of more than 19,000 students from 252 rural primary schools in northwestern China. Using difference-in-difference and propensity score matching approaches, our results indicate that parental out-migration has a significant negative impact on the mental health of LBCs, as they tend to exhibit higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of self-esteem. However, we find that parental return-migration has no significant effect on the mental health of LBCs.