Children who follow their migrant parents to cities have little chance of getting a complete education but their lives back home under the care of their grandparents could be far worse.
The plight of rural children - many of whom have parents working in cities - is the focus of this year's Children's Day, which China observes today.
Many mainland newspapers yesterday marked the occasion by carrying a Xinhua report of a trip Premier Wen Jiabao made to a boarding school in Xiangxi prefecture in Hunan province last week.
Wen called for better care and nutrition for children left in the countryside by their migrant parents. 'We should be grateful to migrant workers and help them take care of their children,' Wen said. 'It is not just a problem for a village, but of all of society.'
He called for more rural schools to be built so children would not have to travel so far.
A survey by eight non-governmental organisations last month covering eight major cities found that nearly half of 396 pupils had no access to science lessons and many received only 45 per cent to 75 per cent of the required class hours for music, physical education and fine arts due to a shortage of qualified teachers.
Yue Yihua, from the Beijing-based NGO New Citizen Programme, which helped organise the survey, said the results pointed to a widening gap in the quantity and quality of schooling between children from migrant families and urban pupils.
