China has earmarked special funds for subsidizing the education of children who follow their parents to move from rural areas to cities, regardless of whether they have permanent household registration in those cities, a top finance official said on March 7.

The country has put in place a unified information system for primary and secondary school students and the State Council has established a guarantee mechanism to ensure that funds are available for urban schools admitting students transferring from the rural areas, said Xiao Jie, minister of finance, at a news conference on the sidelines of the ongoing legislative and political advisory meetings. “Such mechanisms create conditions for guaranteeing that those students can continue their schooling after they move to urban areas.”

China has about 200 million rural farmers working in the cities, but the education of their children has become a major issue since many schools in the urban areas do not admit them due to their lack of local permanent household registration.

Xiao said the State has special subsidies for those urban schools to receive these students, who are also subsidized if they are boarders from poor families.