The education of migrant children in Shanghai: The battle for equity

• We provide an overview of education of migrant children in Shanghai.
• We discuss the equity issues facing migrant children in relation to the PISA success.
• Migrant children have been included in the compulsory education system in Shanghai.
• Efforts have been put to improve the quality of education migrant children receive.
• Migrant children have limited opportunities to continue their post-compulsory education in Shanghai and thus have limited life chance in adulthood.

The PISA success of Shanghai has aroused open challenge and debate about whether the city is a “model of equity”. There have been heated debates about the education of migrant children in Shanghai. This paper analyses publicly accessible policy papers and literature to provide a contextualised interpretation of the major progress and ongoing challenges surrounding the education of migrant children in Shanghai. The paper shows the structural inequalities affecting migrant families and their children. It refers to central as well as local government policies and the constraints these policies face. The analysis shows that Shanghai remains riddled with ongoing challenges that may have been obscured by the PISA success.