DOUBLE DUTY: Ren Tianjiao, a high school student in Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, and a daughter from a migrant family in Gansu Province, shows off different geography textbooks in the two provinces on December 29, 2012 (CFP)

However, the plans of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, whose proportions of migrant population are among the highest in the country, have drawn more criticism than applause for being too timid.

According to the 2010 national census, Beijing had more than 7 million migrants, accounting for nearly 36 percent of the city's permanent population. In Shanghai, 39 percent of its permanent residents were migrants, totaling 8.98 million. Guangdong's 31.28 million migrants made up 37.48 percent of its permanent population.

Timid steps

On December 30, 2012, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Province published respective plans regarding the further education and gaokao of migrant workers' children.

Beijing will allow such children to attend local vocational schools in 2013 and allow them to be matriculated by universities after graduating from vocational programs in 2014, said a statement from the city's Commission of Education.

Shanghai went a step further, saying it will allow migrant workers' children to enter local senior high schools, vocational schools and sit the local gaokao starting in 2014.

Zhang Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University, has thrice proposed to the State Council and the Ministry of Education to allow migrant workers' children to sit the gaokao locally without conditions. But Beijing and Shanghai's reform efforts have disappointed him greatly.

"The so-called breakthrough of Shanghai's plan is as trivial as I expected while Beijing's plan is totally irrelevant," Zhang told Time Weekly newspaper. He said that Beijing's plan crushed the hopes of students from migrant workers' families who anxiously waited to take their secondary or tertiary entrance exam locally this summer.

"Beijing only opens up vocational education to non-permanent residents while the Central Government demanded a reform of the gaokao system," Zhang said.

Under Shanghai's arrangements, parents whose children are qualified for a seat at the local gaokao exam must have stable jobs, fixed residences, a local social insurance account and a high score in the local residence permit system, which favors those with high academic degrees, local property purchases, study-abroad experience and large business investment. Migrant workers from the countryside complained that these requirements have restricted qualified parents mainly to high-caliber professionals working in Shanghai.

"I am not a qualified professional due to my educational background and job, but I bet that my daughter is no less excellent than children of those with high scores in the residence permit system," said Lin Yuanxiang, a laundry store owner from Anhui Province who has resided in Shanghai for 15 years. Lin told Time Weekly that he only received a primary school education and has no social insurance account in Shanghai. Last year Lin had to send her daughter, a second-grade student of a junior middle school, back to his hometown for the sake of educational opportunities, and can only see her once every couple of months.