School "Taxes" of $1.50 Per Month Too Much To Bear

LIJIAGOU, China -- The story of 12 year old Hong Mei is depressingly typical of poor Chinese girls: Although nine years of education is compulsory in China, Hong Mei has never been to school. "Of course I'd like to go, but it's too expensive and my mother needs my help at home," she quietly explained. Her three younger brothers are all enrolled.

School fees in Lijiagou have risen from $2.50 to $7.50 per five-month semester in the last five years -- a huge sum in a region where per capita income is $50 a year and the payback for literacy seems far away. And the Hui Muslims who live here in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, like families in much of poor rural China, have never seen much point in educating daughters anyway.

All told, only 20 percent of girls -- and 40 percent of boys -- are now in school in Lijiagou.

Most experts say it is hard to know the true magnitude of the problem, since statistics collected by the local governments are notoriously unreliable, tweaked to meet government goals.

In a report on education to be published soon, a Communist Youth League official in Guyuan laid out his county's plight: Total revenue is less than $2 million a year in a county with half a million people and 408 schools. Just to pay the county's 5,000 teachers requires more than $3 million annually -- and that does not begin to address costs like classroom supplies and building upkeep.

And so the schools, which are not allowed to charge tuition, instead assess an ever-growing list of "miscellaneous fees."

The fees often total $20 to $35 a year, a huge amount for subsistence farmers. And in remote rural regions, where families generally have two or more children, parents must choose each year who, if anyone, goes to school.

Shan Xinlian, a Hui woman in Nanjiao, Ningxia, has two sons, ages 7 and 12, in elementary school and an 8-year-old daughter in a subsidized second grade class for girls. Ms. Shan never went to school -- and freely admits that her daughter probably would not either, if she had to pay.

"In our village, girls are not as important," she said. "School is so expensive. And what's the point of paying all that money, since she'll belong to another family once she gets married?"