China's Beijing and Shanghai cities and Guangdong Province on Sunday published plans to gradually allow migrant workers' children to enter senior high schools and sit college entrance exams locally.
They are the latest in a total of 13 provinces and municipalities to formulate plans to ensure that rural children who have followed their parents to cities can enjoy the same rights as their urban peers in education.
Beijing will allow migrant workers' children to attend local vocational schools in 2013 and allow them to be matriculated by universities after graduating from the vocational programs in 2014, said a statement from the city's commission of education.
The eastern metropolis of Shanghai took a step further, saying it will allow migrant children in the city to enter local senior high schools, vocational schools and sit college entrance exams (commonly known as gaokao) locally starting in 2014.
Guangdong, a manufacturing heartland in south China and a magnet for migrant workers, has asked its cities to start recruiting migrant workers' children in local senior high schools in 2013.
The province will allow these children to sit gaokao and compete with local residents on an equal footing in college entrance starting in 2016, Luo Weiqi, head of the province's education department, told Xinhua.
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