Non-profit groups should be encouraged to open vocational schools in order to meet the educational needs of children of migrant workers, experts said at a forum Saturday.

Yang Tuan, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that providing quality vocational education to these children, most of whom are left behind by parents who work in big cities, is essential to healthy development.

A study conducted earlier by sociologist Xie Jianshe and his colleagues into three prisons in Guangdong Province showed that 80 percent of the criminals were left behind children.

Teenagers will have to decide, upon graduation from free junior high school in the city, whether to return to villages of their hukou, the household registration, in order to receive education and whether to stay in the city and get a job.

These children often cannot get into public vocational schools in the city because they have no local hukou.

The private schools charge high fees and have poor management, Xu Benliang, honorary director of Shanghai Charity Foundation, told the Global Times Sunday

"Non-profit organizations should be encouraged to run vocational schools, offering good quality education," Xu said. "The present Chinese vocational education is a failure."

A migrant worker, Wu Jinhua, from east China's Fujian Province, whose daughter is a fifth grader, agreed that the existing vocational school system is problematic.

"I don't think vocational schools can bring any good to my daughter," she told the Global Times Sunday.

Xu added that resources given to public schools are wasted due to bad management.

Liang Xiaoyan, chief secretary of Beijing Western Sunshine Rural Development Foundation, told the Global Times Sunday that non-profit schools can utilize social resources, such as donations and expertise from private organizations, to improve the quality.

"Non-profit vocational schools are affordable to these children," Liang said, adding that these schools will be sensitive to the needs of the children and market in order to secure donations and cooperation from the private sector.

She cited a case in Xiuning county, Anhui Province where a carpenter training school produces about 60 graduates a year. Most of the graduates can get a job because the industry needs many workers.

The school utilizes resources from State-run schools, such as teachers, and cooperates with a company to give job training. It also seeks funding from a local foundation, the school head Jiang Zhongxian said.

However, Xie Lihua, a director of Beijing-based non-profit Practical Skills Training Center for Rural Women, said it is difficult to get government resources to expand services because their facilities do not meet government requirements.

"Encouraging charity organizations to run vocational schools needs policy support," Liang said.

(Global Times December 21, 2009)