Sending children overseas ‘too risky’
Print Edition
EDUCATORS have warned parents to be cautious as more and more Chinese families are sending their children abroad for study at foreign high schools or even middle schools.
“The younger the students are, the higher the risk in sending them abroad, including personality growth and academic development,” said Ren Youqun, deputy president of East China Normal University.
Though three students from China were sentenced to prison last month in California for kidnapping and assaulting another Chinese teenager last year, an international education exhibition held in Shanghai on yesterday attracted hundreds of parents with their underage children, including some still in primary schools.
“I don’t want my daughter to go through the tough competition of a Chinese college entrance examination that focuses mostly on paper tests,” a mother surnamed Liu told Shanghai Daily, “I want her to go to an American high school that can give her more freedom to develop her interests.”
When asked if she had ever seen news reports about immature students committing crimes abroad, the mother said that her daughter would never do anything illegal. Another father surnamed Wang, whose son is a 7th grader, said the family is considering immigration so that his boy’s mother can keep an eye on him.
Local schools also saw their students leaving for abroad earlier. At the Shanghai World Foreign Language School, 100 students are accepted each year, but in recent years, only about 25 of them stay for the full three years.
“About 70 percent of them went to American schools and the rest to other countries,” said Cen Xiaohua, assistant to the school’s principal.
Some foreign schools also saw increasing numbers of applicants from China. The Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania stopped receiving applications from China in November, almost two months ahead of its deadline.
“Due to the overwhelming number of requests for campus tours and interviews, we will no longer be able to accept applications or schedule interviews for students from China,” the school said in a statement.
“Though university degree students are still the majority of Chinese students studying abroad, the increase of teenagers applying for high schools in foreign countries is growing rapidly,” said Yuna Zhu of the Lujiazui Center of Shanghai Vision Overseas Consulting Co.
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