The Beijing Municipal Education Commission has reiterated that it will continue to maintain its enrollment requirements for mandatory education for those who have non-Beijing hukou. These requirements are commonly known as the “five proofs.”
These “five proofs” include documents such as proof of employment in Beijing from the child’s legal guardian, proof of actual residency in Beijing, household registration, Beijing temporary residence permit, and other related materials; and they represent a significant barrier to education for many children who have moved into the city with their parents.
In the past years, the enrollment of children in primary school in Beijing has doubled, while the number of schools and qualified teachers has decreased. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission cites this increasing scarcity of materials and economic resources as a means of justifying the maintenance of this system, arguing that the regulations better protect the educational rights of the migrant children who are in keeping with the regulations.
At the district level in Beijing, residential policies have become increasingly detailed, with district regulations tightly linking place of residency, workplace, and social insurance taxes. The Beijing government has been taking steady steps towards a plan of “strictly controlling the population,” namely moving labor-intensive industries out of Beijing. According to Yang Dongping, Director of the 21st Century Education Institute, although this policy may be well supported, linking these industry policies to education policies is “cruel” for migrant children in Beijing.
