Shenzhen has 218 private schools, accounting for 38 percent of all primary and middle schools, according to the Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau.

Two-thirds of Shenzhen's total investment in schools comes from the government and one-third from non-government investors.

In the past three years, non-government agencies and private citizens put 2.94 billion yuan (US$356 million) into running schools, according to the bureau.

In Luohu District alone, there are 18 private schools, 27 percent of the total number in the district. These have 15,000 students enrolled, 17.9 percent of all students in the district.

Luohu District has a hukou (permanent residence) population of 310,500, while its migrant population is 886,100.

"Public schools were built on the basis of hukou population size, so there are far from enough to accommodate all students living in the district," said a district education bureau source.

Migrant worker Guo has a daughter studying at a private school. He has to pay 1,300 yuan a semester.

He said if he had sent his daughter to a public school, he would not only have had to pay 1,317 yuan for tuition, stipulated by the city's education authorities, but also a 1,600 yuan "construction fee" per semester. "It would total about 3,000 yuan per semester. But the money is not everything. A migrant student must pass the school's examination before he or she can be enrolled," Guo said.

Since the migrant student population was large, public schools used examinations to select students for the limited number of places.

He said he would like to send his daughter to a public school for "better quality education."

A city education bureau source said these schools were generally not as good as public schools in terms of facilities, teacher quality and service.

Shenzhen now has 649,000 students under grade nine, of which 396,000 are from migrant families, 65.7 percent of the total.

To better cater for Shenzhen's migrant population, education authorities have proposed setting up schools targeting children in areas where migrant populations are concentrated.

"These schools will satisfy the nine-year compulsory education for migrant children. Tuition fees at these schools might be lower than other schools, because most migrant families had low incomes," the city education bureau source said.

(Shenzhen Daily September 1, 2004)