An Empirical Study On Growth Circumstances Of Foster Children

With the rapid economic growth and urbanization, labors inevitably transfer from villages to cities. Numerous peasants are migrating and working in cities, while their children have to stay in villages for various reasons, thus forming the unattended children issue. From media reports and major research papers, unattended children refer to ones who live in registered residence while their parents (one or both) work in cities. From the current definition, the concept of unattended children does not have clear bounds, and is not suitable to study in depth and detail. For example, there is significant difference between children whose parents both migrated and whose father or mother migrated to cities. As a result, research in recent years has gradually put more focus on sub-groups of unattended children. Foster children, the research subject in this study, is a sub-group of unattended children whose parents are both working in cities, and who lives in family of non-relatives and other caring agencies in registered residence. They are the most lack of kindness from parents, and their unattended features and disadvantages of growth circumstances are the most significant. Thus, foster children are one of the sub-groups of unattended children that demands more focus and study.Foster children booms and continues to grow in rural areas and villages in China. It has become a comprehensive social problem during China’s urbanization process. To improve foster children’s growth circumstances calls for efforts from all aspects of the whole society. However, the majority of foster children are in the compulsory education stage. School is one of the most important places of their livings, and assumes the responsibility to guide foster children’s growth. As a result, government should actively implement interventions via school, teacher and classroom. The suitable intervention methods from education administration will highly impact most foster children’s current living and future development. Based on this understanding, we investigate the growth circumstances of foster children in compulsory education, and compared with non-foster children. We aim to illustrate the factual circumstances of foster children and current situation of educational administration within a county, proposing possible and feasible interventions from the perspective of education administration bureau and schools. We hope to provide meaningful findings for middle and western areas in China with a great number of labor transfering, and a reference of regional empirical study for relevant researchers.In this empirical study, we investigated the growth circumstances of foster children by surveying unattended children, accounting for 70.76% of all students in compulsory education stage in G County. We first designed predict questionnaire for students, and used Cronbach a coefficient to examine the inherent consistency, and clean up the predict questionnaire to get the formal questionnaire. We then surveyed all the 4 to 9 grade students in G county, obtaining 85896 valid questionnaire, together with the student score in 2015 high school entrance exam, we comparatively analyzed circumstances of living, education and social communication between foster children and normal children from descriptive statistics, variance and correlation analysis, and hypothesis testing utilizing SPSS 19.0, Matlab, and Excel. We also interviewed 90 people personally. We aim to study the growth circumstances of foster children from all aspects, finding the adopted administrative measures of G County and problems to be solved.From the analysis, the findings are as follows. Firstly, foster children compose 14.32% of all 4-9 grade students in G County. Of all the foster children,84.27% of them live in schools, with 15.51% in public schools and 68.69% in private schools. The rest 15.8% live outside campus in social foster agencies and families. Secondly, foster children are in relatively inferior circumstances in the following areas. In living circumstances, foster children’s parents’ education level are lower, separation with parents brings emotional problems and less care requires more housework to do. In educational circumstances, foster children enroll in school relatively later, transfer more frequently, and lack support in their studies. In guardian circumstances, foster children’s guardian’s educational levers are relatively lower, and cannot help them with their course work. Thirdly, foster children are not in inferior circumstances in these areas. In living circumstances, foster children do not necessarily have more difficulties in living and education cost, and not necessarily lack of care from parents. In educational circumstances, foster children are not necessarily overlooked and discriminated by teachers. They also do not hate study. In guardian circumstances, foster children are not necessarily being overlooked and unattended. In social circumstances, foster children can get along well with classmates, and not necessarily diffident and extreme. Fourthly, from the performance of 2015 high school entrance exam, we found that foster children’s school performance, cognition ability are at least as good as non-foster children. However, we also found that foster children’s capability in study is not fully utilized. Foster children’s school performances are mostly impacted by the individual good learning behavior, school and teacher’s strict management, their father’s education level, supervisors’ attitude towards their good habits, abundant living and educational expense, living in schools also have positive impact on foster children’s performance. Finally, we found that some private schools have good measures guarding foster children which worth popularizing.From the responses of survey in G County, we concluded that some foster children of G county are not lack of living expenses and they have good academic performance and communication ability, most of whom are living in schools.But the problems are as follows.Firstly from individual foster student’s view, lack of family support can cause mental problems, weak guardian can lead to high dropout rates or behavioral and safety problems. Secondly, government bureaus、schools and foster institution have taken measures to improve foster children’s circumstances. Thirdly, there exist some problems to improve in foster children’s educational administration on many levels. For example, the aid from government are more in material but less in mental support, more in policy making but less in practice, more in theory but less in action. Specifically, education administration bureau needs to do more work in the following areas, some unsuitable school relocation and combination, no effective evaluation of school’s foster children work, and no convenient way to communicate with foster children. Schools do not put more attention to foster children work, and generally are not good at managing foster children or communicating with them. The foster agencies have many shortcomings, for example, indifferent attitude, loose management, and weak guardian ability.Based on foster children’s growth circumstances found in surveys and interviews , we proposed the following educational administrative strategies, involving educational bureau and schools, to improve foster children’s growth circumstances. Firstly, education administration bureau, together with other administrative offices, shall establish assessment policy about foster children work, and enforce more strict surveillance. Secondly, education administration should merge and relocate schools with more care and prudence, paying more attention to rational allocation of educationnal resources. Thirdly, education administration bureau support the development of lodging schools and improve the living condition and management of lodging schools. Fourthly, education administration will organize a platform for schools to communicate management experience of foster children. Finally, education administration shall leverage and unite other government offices and social organizations to contribute to improve the living and education circumstances of foster children.At the end of our study, we analyzed some differences between findings from student questionnaires and individual interviews, and discussed what these differences imply. We also reflected our findings and proposed suggestions and proposed future studies in areas, for example, impact on foster children by guardian’s personality, influence on foster children’s future by fostering experience, and focus on foster girls who might face more difficult circumstances.