Schooling institutions and academic achievement for migrant children in Urban China

Abstract

Using data collected in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, this paper identifies differences in student backgrounds and levels of school resources accessed between migrant students in private migrant schools and those in public urban schools. We then quantify differences in academic achievement between students in these two different schooling systems and employ multivariate regression to examine the extent to which differences in student background and school resources explain differences in achievement. In terms of student background, being from a disadvantaged background is associated with attendance in privately run migrant schools. Migrant schools are also inferior to public schools in terms of school resources. We find that migrants attending migrant schools score 0.56 standard deviations in math achievement below students in public schools. We find that this gap is better explained by differences in school resources (instead of student background). Based on these results, we suggest that government efforts to improve education quality for migrant students should focus on increasing access to public schools.