An alert 8-year-old student, surnamed Ma, at Bulenggou primary school in Dongxiang County, Gansu Province, in this file photo. [China Daily]

Teachers in rural China face major challenges in keeping students in the classroom with many teenagers now choosing to quit school to live as migrant workers.

Although poverty used to be the main reason for dropping out, some teachers say children as young as 13 years old are abandoning their studies to chase their dreams of big money in the cities.

"Cases of children giving up education to be migrant workers can be found in any village in central and western parts of China today," said Wu Guobao, a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' rural development institute.

At Wangji Elementary and Junior High School in Dongxiang County, Gansu Province, principal Ma Jincheng estimated almost half of its 900 students will drop out after finishing junior high.

"Many of these children will be migrant workers by the time they are 16 years old," he said. "They learn about the world outside (their village) through television, the Internet and relatives who work away from home. It's not easy to convince them to stay in school."

Ma recalled one 15-year-old class monitor who quit school to live in Shanghai and then returned six months later to successfully persuade two classmates to join him there.

"He told his friends that Shanghai has everything they wanted: jobs and money. So they left," he added. "It's not easy for a teenager to resist such a thing."

Zhang Jijun, a 29-year-old teacher, said he has experienced similar problems at his school, Liudu Elementary and Junior High, which is in an impoverished village of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

"My students all write about their city dreams in their essays," he said. "When I try to persuade them to finish junior high school, they argue that their illiterate parents can work in the city, so why can't they."

Before the school moved into a newly built three-story building this year, Zhang said children used to study in a wooden shack that had a cowshed downstairs.

"Now we have better facilities but fewer students," he added.

Wu Yingzhen, who teaches at an elementary school in Zelang Village, also in Yunnan, said she fears that only a handful of her 11 pupils will stay until they are 14. (Children in China generally start junior high at 12 but the age is higher in extremely poor areas.)

"Many of them will go to the brickyards in Jiangxi Province to carry bricks with their friends and family," said the 26-year-old, who regularly visits parents to convince them to keep children in school.

"Some parents think they are helping their children by dispensing with, what they believe, is an unnecessary and expensive education," said Wu Yingzhen. "But they're actually ruining their lives."

About 90 percent of migrant workers in her village returned from the cities after five to 10 years, she added.