China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) said yesterday that K-12 schools will be the first to reopen once COVID-19 is sufficiently contained, with universities to follow sometime after, Beijing News reports.

According to Wang Dengfeng, the director of MOE’s COVID-19 task force, the top priority will be getting all primary and secondary schools settled, and only then will they consider reopening universities.

Wang also said it is possible that schools could add weekend classes to their schedule to make up lost time, China Daily reported.

Of the more than 40 million college students across China, more than 10 million attend school outside their home province. With so many students traveling back to campus, most of whom would have to rely on trains and planes to get across the country, the migration could upend months of painstaking work to control the spread of the virus, the ministry said.

By the time all grade levels have resumed onsite learning, over 300 million students will be moving around their cities, potentially swapping both germs and quarantine stories.

Given that very few provinces have settled on opening dates for K-12 schools, it could be a while yet for the nation’s universities.

Though some provinces have begun slowly ushering students back onto campus, there’s still no date announced for Beijing. Follow our blog here for the latest updates.

Photos: quickenloans.com 

On Feb 17, China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) released a warning regarding a new fraud scheme meant to deceive students and parents using online learning platforms.

According to numerous reports by parents of elementary and middle school students, people have been impersonating school employees through various WeChat and QQ groups, doling out fraudulent information about the postponed Spring semester and the implementation of online teaching, and then requesting payments via WeChat, Alipay, and other online payment methods. 

It’s no secret that the move to 100 percent online learning caught many schools and families off guard, effectively plunging both into otherwise uncharted territory. As such, MOE stressed that education departments and schools should continuously work to develop and manage their systems, as to ensure the safety and security of teachers, students, and parents .

For schools’ WeChat groups and QQ groups, MOE suggested relevant staff:

• Strictly enforce the responsibilities of group admins
• Strictly identify all members in the groups (real-name system)
• Strictly implement group approval and verification systems
• Remove suspicious people

It is recommended that students and parents double-check with schools and teachers before making any purchase. If students or parents do find themselves in a suspicious situation, they should report it to their school, keep relevant evidence and documentation, and promptly report the incident to police.

Photo: unsplash.com, moe.gov.cn

Common sense dictates that as Beijing continues to grow city authorities should be doing everything in their power to expand its infrastructure, as has been the case with our much-improved subway system and on the flip-side, the high-end housing glut.

But there are other areas where efforts, much less the supply, seemingly cannot keep pace with the demand. Beijing’s beleaguered healthcare system, a woeful lack of roads and the dwindling water supply are at the top this list; but for the city’s growing population of parents, perhaps most alarming is the Capital’s school situation.

A few weeks ago I blogged about a recent article in The Diplomat in which Jiang Xueqin, a writer and deputy principal at the Peking University High School, described how Shanghai’s school system is now considered the world’s best by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and compared it with Beijing’s school system (which comes up woefully short, I’m afraid to say).   

The differences cited (i.e. an emphasis on analytical and creative thinking in the curriculum, a system of "tangible awards" for faculty and administrators to improve the schools etc.) were eye opening.

Qualitative differences aside, one thing Beijing shares in common with Shanghai is a dearth of schools, both public and private – an unfortunate reality my family has learned first-hand after spending a year dealing with administrative problems at our daughter’s kindergarten (I’ll spare you the details).

Quite simply, we’ve found out that when it comes to schools in Beijing, it’s a seller’s market. Of course there are undoubtedly many caring and competent school faculty and administrators in this city; but it seems that there are just as many, if not more, who seemingly operate with impunity by routinely under-investing in competent teachers, facilities and educational resources (lord knows how higher-level regulators might also be personally profiting from all this).

In some ways, it’s easy to understand the jaded cynicism that some administrators must feel – for every disgruntled parent or problematic child they deal with there are probably ten families waiting just to get into the door – call it the "Surly Restaurant Waitstaff Effect." Small wonder that local parents often feel compelled to bribe teachers and administrators just to ensure their kid gets adequate attention.

I shouldn’t complain too much, my family is among the fortunate – at least we have a school for our daughter to attend (for now). The situation is even more dismal for less advantaged families, many of whom are migrant workers, in the Capital. The China Daily reports that around 14,000 students in the city are being affected by a campaign of school closures targeting "unsafe private schools:"

Since June, about 24 schools in Daxing, Chaoyang and Haidian districts have been shut down. With the new semester just days away, the parents of stranded students face a race against time to get them enrolled before classes restart … Reasons for the crackdown on private schools vary. The most common are that there is a lack of permits and that school buildings do not meet safety standards … According to safety standards, a school should be at least 15,000 square meters in size and have a floor space of at least 3,587 square meters, as well as a 200-meter track for sports. "Being realistic, no private school for migrant children can meet that standard," [says]Principal Yang Tuan, whose school was among those ordered to close this summer.

The motivations behind dealing with these schools, many of whom undoubtedly operate under less-than-stellar conditions, are justifiable to an extent – safety, health and administrative problems surely exist at these schools. But what’s befuddling is why local authorities are not constructively working with these schools to improve their facilities, as opposed to allegedly and simply shutting them down – under these conditions the affected students – many of whom have reportedly not been guaranteed placement in other schools – literally have nowhere else to go. Am I missing something here, or are not enough palms getting greased?

The article also cites one NGO worker’s claim that to date, only 63 such schools "have been approved by city authorities" – factor this in to a citywide population of some 20 million and it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that we’ve got an alarming problem. A lack of adequate educational resources for such a large portion of the city’s population does not bode well for this society’s future, and it brings to mind what’s happened in the US after decades of educational decline (or closer to home, the chaos that erupted in China just a few decades ago). 

Perhaps I’m being too cynical, but I hate to think that this is just another case of "sweeping things under the rug" or, to be more precise, "sweeping undesirables from one pile to another" (e.g. we don’t want your kind around here so we are going to cut you off from the necessities of life). At this rate, such shortsightedness means we will eventually all pay a heavier price in the future – and I’m not just talking tuition.

More info: Chinese Migrant Workers Walled Off From Society (voa365.com)