Authorities jointly issued a suggestion on the feasibility of allowing migrant workers' children to take gaokao, college entrance examinations, where their parents work, says an article in Beijing Youth Daily. Excerpts:

It is another important step to guarantee the education rights of migrant workers' children after allowing them to get primary and middle education where they live.

According to the suggestion, local governments would be in charge of making and implementing their plans. This suggestion also presents several considerations as references when local authorities determine the children's qualifications.

For example, the children's parents should have stable jobs, live in legal and stable sites with their children, and must have paid social security insurance in the place for a certain period of time.

The problem is, a university might have different gaokao-score requirements for students with different hukou. And universities' enrollment quotas for provinces and even cities are settled each year. The examination papers are also different from place to place.

Even if the migrant children get the chance to take the exams in the city, they can be admitted only by universities according to the requirement of scores in their hometowns, but not the city's.

The education resources and migrant-worker populations vary so much among Chinese cities that the local governments' respective plans under the suggestion must be different. But the central authority must make different plans compatible with each other.

Therefore, there is still a long way to go before the suggestion can be translated into practical plans in different places. But it is still a sign of significant progress to issue the suggestion, given that China's migrant workers and their children have worked and lived in cities for about 30 years since the 1980s.