Why Are Youngsters from the Lower Social Strata More Likely to Experience Academic Failure?

1In the study of education and social mobility, one important topic is: Why are teenagers from immigrant or low-income families more likely to experience failure in school?

2Generally speaking, the educational achievement of teenagers is related to the following factors:

3The first is intelligence, which is mainly reflected in IQ and learning ability. Existing studies have found no systematic significant difference in IQ among adolescents of different social classes. In other words, IQ is more of an individual difference than a class difference. In my fieldwork, I often met excellent children of migrant workers who are no less excellent than their urban peers. The study of Chen Yuanyuan and Feng Shuaizhang (2013, 2017) showed that when the children of migrant workers entered better-quality public schools, or when their schools were financially supported by the government, the gap in studying performance between migrants’ children and their urban peers quickly narrowed.

4The second is academic input. This includes a student’s investment of time and energy in study, which is related to personal self-discipline and to the family’s parenting style. Some studies have found that middle-class jobs require more innovation, independent judgment, and active expression, so parents with those jobs assign particular importance to values of self-direction, while the jobs of the working class are mostly regular, repetitive, routine minded, and instruction oriented, and place more importance on conformity (Konh 1959; Hong and Ho 2005).

5The third is family background. The economic, cultural, and social capital the parents possess has an important impact on their children’s academic development. There is no doubt that family background has a significant effect on children’s education (Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999). Studies in the United States and Canada have found that the biggest cause of differences in students’ academic achievement has always been differences in family socioeconomic status. In contemporary China, the extent of “motivating children to study” among middle-class families is much higher than it is among lower-class families, and middle-class families tend to adopt high-intensity parenting methods because they have the spare money and time to invest in their children’s education, send their children to high-quality key schools (for this they need to buy “school district housing” or use various social resources), and send children for after-school tutoring at well-known training institutions. Middle-class families also have closer home-school relationships, which allow them to form a cooperative parenting style together with teachers and after-school counseling institutions. While low-income families have high academic expectations for their children, they often adopt a laissez-faire parenting style because they don’t have enough time to spend with their children, and they don’t have enough money to invest in their children’s human capital. They are more likely to develop an attitude along the lines of: if a child does well in his/her studies, the parents are willing to do their best to cultivate him/her, and if he/she doesn’t make it to high school/college, then the parents will let him/her start working early to support the family. It is more difficult for the middle class to accept a child’s academic failure than it is for the families at the bottom of the social strata, because such failure means downward social mobility (Doepke and Zilibotti 2019). This is why middle-class parents are more involved than ever in their children’s studies. They tend to accompany their children studying in training institutions and continue to coach their children after returning home. Lower-class families cannot afford huge tutoring, nor do they have the ability to tutor their children in their studies. In this regard, the situation in China might be basically similar to that in France. The study of Western countries also found that the increasing gap in academic achievement caused by differences in families’ socioeconomic status mainly occurs during non-school hours, especially during summer vacation. During the school year, students from different family backgrounds receive a similar education in the same environment. They share standardized courses and teachers after professional training, and their grades differ some, but not too much. But during the holidays, family-provided learning opportunities and learning resources are highly different, resulting in a gradual increase in differences in academic performance.

6The fourth is the institutional environment. If teenagers’ academic competition is compared to a sporting competition, then the institutional environment can be regarded as competition rules (Van de Werfhorst and Mijs 2010). The institutional educational environment has two dimensions: one is its openness, that is, whether educational resources are open to all social strata or groups; and the other is fairness, that is, whether the selection rules are fair to everyone. In contemporary China, the children of migrant workers, represented by Li, face an unfavorable institutional environment: first, in terms of openness, they cannot take the entrance examination and the college entrance examination in their residential area; they can only receive vocational education or technical education there. Secondly, in terms of fairness, they can get far fewer educational resources than their urban peers—for example, they cannot enter high-quality public schools. The private migrant schools in which they study are faced with the risk of being shut down at any time, and the average education subsidies for students in these schools is significantly lower than those of their urban peers. Moreover, the students are at a disadvantage in independent selection interviews for prestigious schools that place importance on temperament, speech, and comprehensive quality. In Shanghai, there were 418 privately run schools for children of immigrants in 2000. Since then, the number has decreased each year. In 2014, there were 152 privately run schools for children of immigrants. In 2018, the number was 84; in 2019, the number was 64. In 2020, the number is expected to be 48. The number of enrolled students in these schools is also decreasing each year. In 2002, there were 196,000 enrolled students; in 2004, there were 224,000 enrolled students; in 2014, the number was 115,300; in 2015, it was 98,000; in 2016, it shrank to 81,700; in 2018, it was 51,100; and in 2019, the number was 49,000 (Xiong 2020). Due to a sharp decline in the pool of students, the operating funds of these schools grow increasingly tighter, causing a serious loss of outstanding students. Shanghai’s public schools did not admit more migrant children, but with the decrease in the number of children of immigrants, the proportion of those who attended public schools increased greatly, and the proportion of children of immigrants in primary schools increased from 83.17 % in 2018 to 83.64 % in 2019. In the process of rectifying the schools for migrant children, a considerable number of children of migrant workers were forced to separate from their parents and leave Shanghai, and return to the place of their registered residence in order to study, resulting in their change in identity from “migrant children” to “left-behind children.” The number of children of migrant workers in Shanghai dropped from 538,563 in 2014 to 500,664 in 2015, meaning that at least 30,000 of the children of migrant workers had to return to their places of origin because of the harsh enrollment policy. Another indicator also illustrates the deterioration of migrant children’s right to education: from 2011 to 2015, the number of children of migrant workers admitted to secondary schools (vocational, technical, and secondary specialized) in Shanghai were 6,032; 8,191; 10,125; 6,912; and 6,183, respectively. Having reached an all-time high in 2013, the number then quickly fell back to the 2011 level and is expected to decline in the next few years.

Academic Vulnerability

7I adopted participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and questionnaires to explain why education in China could not provide upward mobility for the children of migrant workers. By comparing a public school with a school for children of migrant workers in Shanghai, I found two different mechanisms of class reproduction: one is the ceiling effect that exists in public schools. The children of migrant workers who attend public schools are initially quite motivated to study, and their grades are not inferior to those of their urban peers; however, by the third year of junior high school, the children of migrant workers will feel the limitations of an invisible “ceiling” because they cannot take their senior high school entrance examination in Shanghai. In the interaction with the outside world, the children of migrant workers have low expectations for their own prospects (as if there is a ceiling blocking the way of upward mobility). Thereby they tend to give up on pursuing their studies.

8The second mechanism is the counter-school culture (Willis 1981) prevailing in migrant children’s schools, where students are often tired of learning, not willing to abide by school rules, and “laze away” at school. By denying the school’s value system and showing contempt for the authority of the school and its teachers, they have, on the one hand, gained independence and self-respect; but on the other hand, they are willing to enter the secondary labor market in advance, speeding up the process of class reproduction. These two mechanisms are not so much the children of migrant workers’ resistance to the mainstream system as they are an adaptation to the external environment and institutional discrimination. The existence of these mechanisms further reinforces the inequality embedded in the institutional system (Xiong 2015).

9Based on the case study of two young people from the lower of the social strata in China and France and the long-term observation of low-level groups, we put forward the concept of “academic vulnerability,” which means it is easy for students to interrupt their learning process because of weariness, truancy, and dropping out of school, and points out that the reason youngsters from lower social strata are more vulnerable to academic failure and have difficulty in reaching the same level of educational achievement as upper-middle-class children, is that their family background, institutional environment, and social environment are usually unfavorable to their academic development.

10It is not impossible for young people from lower social strata to achieve academic success, but it often requires extraordinary efforts and great sacrifices on the part of the family. For example, I know a Fudan University undergraduate who was originally a child of migrant workers and came to Shanghai with his parents at the age of three. He was educated in Shanghai and attended a private school for the children of migrant workers. In the fourth grade, his parents realized that the quality of their child’s school was not as good as that of the key schools in their hometown in Anhui Province, and that their children would not be able to take the senior high school entrance examination in Shanghai; thus, his mother took him back to his hometown to continue school, while his father continued to work in Shanghai. After his mother returned home, her main focus, except for farming, was taking care of him; meanwhile, only his father worked away from their hometown. In this way, the family income was cut by nearly a half, and life became particularly difficult. He was lucky because he was born into a one-child family, which is extremely rare among migrant families. The vast majority of migrant families have two to three children; if he had not been an only child it would have been impossible for his mother to give up work and accompany him to study. Because of his outstanding talent and extreme diligence, he finally was admitted to the top university in China. In reality, it is more common for parents to work in Shanghai, and their two or three children to attend private schools for children of migrant workers. The children either attend vocational or technical schools in Shanghai after graduation from junior high school, or return to their residency at a high grade in primary school or a low grade in junior high school, where they are either housed in boarding schools or left to be cared for by their grandparents. Because the schools in Shanghai and hometown schools are different in terms of textbooks and teaching style, and because their parents cannot accompany them, most of the children who go back to take the senior high school entrance examination can hardly get admitted to ideal schools.

11Unlike France, China has a relatively low level of vocational education and technical education, which is not so closely associated with industry and lacks sensitivity to market demands, resulting in a low degree of social recognition. The youngsters in the lower social strata of China do not think that vocational education can present opportunities for upward mobility. Although many of them study in vocational schools, they lack passion for learning and are highly likely to drop out of school. In comparison, Nourredine, a youth from the bottom of the social strata in Lyon, faced a more friendly institutional environment than Xiao Li did, since the discrimination that targets migrants and minorities in France occurs more on the social level than on the institutional level. In Western developed countries, the social prestige and conditions of vocational education is much better than that of China because the income of blue-collar technical workers is not much lower than that of white-collar workers; many blue-collar workers even have higher income and lower unemployment risk.

12Whether in China or France, education is one of the few channels of upward mobility for young people from lower social strata. Through education, young people from the lower social strata can realize the growth of human capital, thereby improving their opportunities and returns in the labor market. In the past few decades, diploma inflation (Collins 1979) has emerged as a global phenomenon, and some more developed economies can be called “credential societies” (Collins 1979). There is a paradox in the credential society: on the one hand, diplomas have been depreciated. That is the so-called diploma inflation. When more and more people get educational diplomas or degrees, the value of a diploma goes down. On the other hand, there is a higher demand for diplomas among people. As an increasing number of people get higher degrees, the educational level requirements for a given position keep increasing.

13Preparing youth for the labor market requires a certain functional distinction of the educational system. Generally speaking, the educational system can be divided into two different tracks. One is general education, which teaches more general skills, from ordinary high school to college education. The other is vocational education, including vocational schools, technical schools, and technical secondary schools, which generally teach more specialized skills.

14Through general higher education, students are more likely to obtain decent white-collar jobs, higher income, and higher social status. Since they learn general skills, their field of employment is broader. Through vocational education, the students learn specialized skills, and their jobs require greater labor intensity at a relatively lower social status. But if blue-collar technical workers have higher incomes, this could trigger a compensation mechanism to enhance the appeal of vocational education.

15On the one hand, we need to improve the openness and fairness of the education system, so that young people from lower social strata are entitled to fairer competition, so that they have more access to high-quality public education resources. First of all, the city should gradually open the channel of the senior high school entrance examination and the college entrance examination to the children of migrant workers. The household registration system should be unbundled from the welfare system. Secondly, we should compensate for the deficiencies in family backgrounds through the advantages of school education resources, to narrow the gap between the students from the lower strata and the students from the higher classes, and effectively improve educational equity.

16On the other hand, vocational education and lifelong education are of vital importance to China, a big country with a large population and a large manufacturing industry. Vocational education should be vigorously promoted and market oriented to reinforce the combination of vocational education and industry so that some of the youth in the lower strata can improve their human capital and enhance their competitiveness in employment through vocational education; this will also foster talent for upgrading China’s manufacturing industry.

Empowering Youth from the Bottom of the Social Strata

17The reason for the academic failure for youths from lower social strata is not their low level of intelligence or their laziness, or the so-called culture of poverty (Leacock 1971), but their environment. Both family background and institutional environment induce them to give up on their educational efforts. The children of migrant workers are not weak, they just lack opportunities.

18In Shanghai, I have been tracking an NGO serving the children of migrant workers for more than a decade. JQ Volunteer Center was established in 2008 by volunteers and public-minded people. It is a public welfare organization that provides quality and free after-school education for impoverished youngsters, especially children of migrant workers in Shanghai. The NGO has more than 100 professional teaching volunteers, who can provide training services based on music and art, as well as other applied courses, such as English and computer skills, with the aim of helping children develop their own potential and enhance their self-confidence, as well as cultivate team spirit, independent thinking abilities, and social responsibility through study and communication with students and volunteers.

19Today, the early students of the JQ Volunteer Center are in their twenties. Some of them have already started working in Shanghai, some are still studying abroad, and some are working full-time in JQ Volunteer Center.

20The first category comprises people involved in the manufacturing and service industries. All of them attended vocational schools in Shanghai and either gained jobs in enterprises or started their own small shops after graduation. These children graduated from junior high school around 2008–2012. Because the children of migrant workers in Shanghai cannot participate in the senior high school entrance examination, they faced three choices after graduating from junior high school: finding employment immediately; returning to their hometown to attend ordinary high school; or studying in vocational schools in Shanghai. According to our observation, about 50 % of the students who did not join any NGOs chose to work directly, 20 % returned to their hometown for high school, and 30 % received vocational education in Shanghai, while more than 60 % of students in JQ Volunteer Center chose to attend vocational schools in Shanghai, and about 30 % returned to their hometown for high school; less than 10 % chose to go to work directly. In contrast, students who once studied in JQ Volunteer Center attached greater importance to education and degrees, and few chose to directly enter the labor market after graduating from junior high school. Influenced by volunteers in JQ Volunteer Center (the volunteers in JQ are white-collar workers and college students, who tend to encourage the children of migrant workers to study applied majors based on rational analysis of their academic achievements and educational environment), they have less of a bias against vocational education, and many JQ people regard vocational education as a practical choice because it means they do not have to separate from their parents and change from migrant children into left-behind children. Vocational education also gives them a certain competitiveness in the labor market. Compared with their parents, they are well educated and have more substantial human capital; in terms of social capital, they have more local friends in Shanghai, including classmates, colleagues, and friends with similar interests, many of whom speak fluent Shanghainese, so they are highly integrated into Shanghai’s local society, which in turn enhances their competitiveness in the labor market. The JQ students in manufacturing and service industries are mainly working as technicians or office clerks, and most of them spend their spare time pursuing adult education; some of the excellent students work in international schools, as well as foreign companies and foundations, and are expected to become middle class.

21The second category constitutes those going abroad for further study. In 2010, Zhang, founder of JQ Volunteer Center, established contact with an overseas educational institution. The school offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) to schools worldwide, and has 15 colleges all over the world. The person in this school who is in charge of enrollment into IBDP in China highly appreciates the educational concepts of JQ. Considering the difficulties encountered by the children of migrant workers, he was willing to provide JQ students priority in admissions. In April 2011, Xin, one of Zhang’s earliest students, received the school’s admission notice, which came with a full scholarship (with an exemption from tuition and accommodation fees for two years), and she got the opportunity to go to Canada to study pre-university courses. Xin comes from an ordinary working-class family, and her parents have to pay the growing education fees of their three children; before Xin got the notice that she was admitted to a school from a foreign country, she had been studying in an adult high school on the outskirts of Shanghai, where the conditions were very bad. But she did not give up on her dream. With the help of Zhang and the volunteers at JQ, she took the TOEFL, studied music, and finally broke through the limitations of her external environment. Inspired by Xin, eight students in JQ were admitted successively to different campuses of the IBDP school; most of them have become undergraduates in the United States and Canada, and the eldest student has found a job in Canada.

22The third category involves those who become social workers and work full time for JQ. The first child of migrant workers employed by JQ is Ru, who was born in 1992 and studied in JQ as one of its first students. Unable to attend a senior high school entrance examination, she returned to her hometown in Anhui for study after she graduated from junior high school. Later, she was admitted to the sociology department at A University. After graduation in 2014 she chose to return to Shanghai and become a full-time staff member at JQ. Although the salary is not high, the job allows her to provide help to children whose share her childhood circumstances. She felt quite satisfied. After that, two former students of JQ also became full-time staff members, and another former student of JQ became a part-time photographer.

23The case of JQ Volunteer Center tells us that to improve the situation of youth from the bottom of the social strata, we need not only to improve their institutional environment and eliminate the institutional discrimination they face, but also to provide them with social support and empower them through social organizations (Xiong and Li 2017).