After a 2014 Ministry of Education document reinforced the system by which school places are allocated based on housing, parents once again heated up competition for homes near top schools to secure their kids a spot at the best institutions. Despite the efforts of government to cool the market, prices have skyrocketed in recent years.

Parents take their children to register at a primary school in Guangdong Province. Photo: CFP

Want to make sure your kid goes to one of Beijing's top schools? First, you must own a house. And your home in the capital must be as near to your target school as possible, as this is the main way in which schools select their students.

In April 2016, Beijing's different districts released new policies for primary and middle schools' admission procedures. Southern Weekly reported that these policies keep home ownership at the heart of the admission process.

Haidian district has formally adopted a "six years one seat" policy, which means that an address can only be used for one school admission registration every six years. And Xicheng district has stipulated that a hukou (housing registration) only grants a child a school seat if the family has been living in Xicheng for a certain number of years. 

These new measures are even tougher on non-Beijing hukou holders. Shijingshan district has decided that "Beijing green card" holders no longer have the same rights to education as local Beijingers. In Fengtai district, families without local hukou must prove their employment and housing status before their children can go to one of the district's schools.

While other policies come and go, the only policy that is remaining a constant is the "vicinity" principle. 

Property primacy

According to China Education Newspaper statistics, in 2015 about 160,000 kids registered at Beijing primary schools. Among them, about 100,000 were local Beijing residents and 60,000 were non-Beijing residents. The 25 top primary schools in Dongcheng, Xicheng and Haidian districts - the areas with the best educational resources - took in only about 5,000 students.

While the "vicinity" principle is common in education systems around the world. But in a megacity like Beijing in which supply and demand are extremely unbalanced both at the city and district level, it has created a situation in which a family's ability to buy an incredibly expensive house is the key determiner of whether they can get a place at a public-funded school.

A part-time school admission consultant who is well-known among Beijing parents, nicknamed Wuyan, told Southern Weekly that there have been two major reforms to Beijing's education system since the founding of New China - in 1997 and 2014.

Before 1997, there were few non-Beijing residents living in the city and most kids entered primary schools near the address on their hukou. To secure places at top schools, some parents moved their hukou to Haidian district where there was - and is - a high concentration of excellent schools near the city's universities.

Before 1997, children took an exam before entering middle school. Those who did exceptionally well were eligible to go to the city's most prestigious schools, while those who did less well would be assigned to the school nearest their home.

However, after 1997 the city phased out the exams and began its "mega lottery."

From then on, a computer program decided who went where and most students ended up at schools near their homes. 

However, some parents still wanted to have a say in where their children were educated and some schools still wanted to ensure that they could take in as many outstanding students as possible. Therefore, some students were never entered  the "mega lottery."

Wuyan said this created "gray channels" for school admissions. Some entered top schools through their relationship with school administrators; some got in because of their special talents, primary school recommendations or auditions; and some parents chose to pay an admission or sponsorship fee.

Many good schools operated under the system of "collectively trained students," whereby selected companies financially supported some good schools and their employees' children could then gain admission to the schools.

This continued until January 2014 when the Ministry of Education released a decree demanding that all school authorities implement a strict "vicinity admissions policy" during compulsory education.

Three months later, Beijing banned employers from paying their staff's school fees and placed limits on the number of students that schools could admit due to their "special talents," reasserting the primacy of housing in the admission process.

Huangchenggen Primary School in Xicheng district, due in part to the sheer number of applicants, now sorts children by their housing situation. If the applicant child has a hukou registered in the school's neighborhood and the child's parents or guardian have a house in the area, they are given priority in admissions. Next in line are children that have a local hukou but their grandparents own a house. These children are then ranked by how long they've had their hukou.

Third in line are children with hukou from other parts of Beijing, but with a local property-owning parent. Fourth in line are children with local hukou but no property. This clearly illustrates that housing is considered more important than local hukou.

If a child is a non-Beijing resident, owning a house matters even more. For non-Beijing residents kids to enter Beijing schools, their parents must have five certificates ready: proof of employment, certificate of residence, the hukou of the entire family, their temporary Beijing residential permit and proof showing the children don't have any other registered guardians in their hometown. 

These children are then divided into two categories: those going to city schools and those going to township schools. In each group, priority is given to families which own property.  

Home shabby home

A 10-square-meter alley near a top school in Xicheng district, Beijing is priced at 1.5 million yuan ($226,000). Photo: CFP

Wang Peng, vice director of the Beijing Qinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Research Institute Technology and Innovation Center, told Southern Weekly that neighborhoods near top schools have the most resilient housing markets in Beijing. No matter how housing prices rise or fall, these neighborhoods have "steadily gone up" for several years.

The average house price in Beijing was about 8,000 yuan ($1,204) per square meter 10 years ago, and had reached around 31,000 yuan by 2013. Homes in inner-city, good school-rich Dongcheng sold for 30,000 yuan per square meter on average in 2012, and this number had risen by over 50 percent by 2013 and reached 52,000 yuan.

According to a report from the center, homes in Xicheng now sell for an average of 60,560 yuan per square meter. Similar homes in Dongcheng cost on average 58,964 yuan per square meter.

According to the same report, property near the famous Elementary School Affiliated to Renmin University of China could go for as much as 85, 257 yuan per square meter, and houses near Beijing No. 1 Experimental Elementary School are valued at as much as 180,012 yuan ($27,000) per square meter.

And what does one get for this huge pricetag? Some of the city's oldest, worst maintained and smallest houses. The reports said that 53 percent of homes in Xicheng were built before 1990.

 

 Efforts and solutions

The local government has introduced measures that aim to cool down a property market overheated by these demands, and to provide greater equality in the distribution of educational resources.

For example, Beijing has ordered top high schools to reserve some vacancies for children who do not live in the schools' neighborhood that went to lower-ranked middle schools.

The government has also encouraged top-notch primary schools to merge with more average primary schools.

And the government is expanding the number of classrooms by renovating currently unused sites, in an effort to adjust the imbalance between supply and demand.

And according to planner Cheng Qingning from the Beijing Qinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Research Institute, these measures seem to have been effective as the growth of Dongcheng and Xicheng house prices has slowed.

But former principal of The Affiliated High School of Peking University Zhao Yulin observed that, the critical factor lies in the imbalance of the teaching staff.

"Most teachers at good schools do not wish to be sent to ordinary schools," said Zhao. "Being a teacher at an excellent school gives them status."

After studying the country, Zhao says that there are three ways that China can learn from Japan's experience. First, public schools should standardize their hardware and software to address imbalances between schools.

Second, Japan has many non-government funded schools which have increased the number of high-quality school places, which China lacks. And lastly, Japan invests much more in education than China, 6 percent of GDP compared to 4 percent.

Global Times-Southern Weekly
Newspaper headline: Primary property