A Study On The Relationship Between The Social Support Of Left-behind Children And Their Schooling

The Premier Li of Chinese government proposed in the 2015 government work report that we should care about left-behind children and establish social protectioin system for juveniles. With the dramatic transition of society and the rapid urbanization in China, an increasing number of migrant workers have been flooding into cities for work, contributing to increasing number of children left behind in rural areas. In the absence of the care from parents, the left-behind children are confronted with numerous difficulties in their learning, mental and physical health and security. Therefore, it is of high significance to focus on the social support of left-behind children. So far many schools in rural areas have taken concerned measures for the education of left-behind children under the command of the government. This paper aims to analyze the status of the social support of left-behind children and its relationship with schooling, to propose suggestions for the education and management of left-behind children and thus improve the social support of left-behind children.Based on the Social Support Theory, this paper adopts empirical method to investigate three schools in Shanxi Province to inquire into the social support of left-behind children. First, this paper analyzes the status of the social support of left-behind children, including instrumental support, emotional support, intimacy and company, and value affirmation from five resources of social support. Second, the author analyzes the educational status of left-behind children, including academic performance, the relationship with teachers, the relationship with peers and school environment. Third, the regression models are established and correlation analysis is applied to analyze the relationship between the social support and the schooling. Forth, according to these conclusions, various suggestiongs are proposed to improve the social support of left-behind children.Findings are as follows:first, the left-behind children have less social support of all four dimensions than non-left-behind children. And their social support from their mother, father and friends are all less than non-left-behind children but that from their grandparents and teachers are more than the counterparts. Second, the instrumental support and intimacy and company support of left-behind children are worrying while their emotional support is relatively satisfactory. Third, the school work plays an important role in enhancing the social support of left-behind children by improving the academic performance of children, paying more attention to left-behind children like tutoring, communicating with them and visiting their parents, broaden the peers and better the school environment including the accommodation and teaching. According to these conclusions, the author proposed that the teachers should undertake the important role to concern left-behind children and more trainings should be waged for teachers to improve their ability to educate left-behind children. Psychological health education should be strengthened. And the school should organize more excurrculum activities through which left-behind can associate with peers. The school should communicate and cooperate with the parents to care for left-behind children.There still exist some limitations for this paper. The author merely chose Shanxi Province to conduct the investigation, constituting the limited scale and representativeness of the sample, which may not have popularized significance. Moreover, this paper did not control other factors which may have influence on the social support of left-behind children besides the factor of schooling, which may contribute to inaccurate conclusions. For further study, we should expand the scale of the sample, especially covering the West China. Besides, other factors influencing the social support of left-behind children will be controlled.