With the exemption of all tuition and miscellaneous fees for rural compulsory education students since 2007, the compulsory education is completely free in rural China. The statistics reported by Ministry of Education of China showed that 97.2 percent of junior high school students in rural China completed their 9-year compulsory education in 2008. However, there are concerning reports that poor rural areas in China suffer from high and maybe even rising dropout rates.

Surprisingly, besides aggregated statistics from Ministry of Education of China, there have been few independent, survey-based studies regarding dropout rates in China and especially in poor rural areas. In order to find out the true situation on the ground, YI Hongmei, ZHANG Linxiu, LUO Renfu, from Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research and their collaborators conducted a follow-up survey over 7800 students, grade 7, 8, and 9 from 46 randomly selected junior high schools in four counties in two provinces in North and Northwest China, respectively in 2009 and 2010.

Xiao Yang Left Junior High School after Grade 8 and Took a Sewing Job in Suburban Xi'an（Photo by YI Hongmei）

According to the findings of the study, dropout rates between grade 7 and grade 8 was 5.7% and dropout rates between grade 8 and grade 9 reached 9.0%. In sum, among the total number of students attending junior high school during the first month of the first term of grade 7, 14.2% had left school by the first month of grade 9.

The study also used the survey data to examine factors correlated with dropping out, such as the opportunity cost of going to school, household poverty, and poor academic performance. The results indicated that dropout rates were even higher for students that were older, from poorer families (and families in which the parents were not healthy), or were performing more poorly academically.

Based on these findings, researchers conclude that although the government’s policy of reducing tuition and fees for junior high students may be necessary, it is not sufficient to keep kids in school and to solve the high dropout problem.

The related to results have been published in International Journal of Educational Development. (Hongmei Yi, Linxiu Zhang, Renfu Luo, Yaojiang Shi, Di Mo, Carl Brinton and Scott Rozelle. Dropping out: Why are Students Leaving Junior High in China's Poor Rural Areas? International Journal of Educational Development (2012) (32): 555-563).