New school district policy puts fairness first
Print Edition
FORGET cram sessions and test scores, today’s tiger parents in China are fixated on real estate.
In Shanghai, admission to highly rated public primary and secondary schools (and even some kindergartens) is so sought-after that home prices within the catchment areas of these institutions have been pushed to astronomical levels.
Take Huishi Primary School, one such institution in Xuhui District.
Prices for apartments in the surrounding school district average some 60,000 yuan (US$9,101) per square meter. A few units even run as high as 90,000 yuan per square meter, according to figures released on lianjia.com, the website of a local real estate brokerage.
Skyrocketing prices, however, seem to have done little to dampen parents’ enthusiasm to buy these coveted homes and secure the best education for their children. This could all change soon though with the Ministry of Education’s release late last year of a set of reforms known as the “bigger catchment policy.”
Currently, public schools (except high schools) enroll students only from within their designated catchment areas. But once the national policy is in place — timetables for implementation vary by locale — it will lead to expanded catchment areas that mix reputable schools and lesser-known ones. What’s more, school attendance will be determined by the random results of lottery-style draws, instead of simply owning a home in the right neighborhood.
Irrational exuberance
The policy goals seem straightforward: to tamp down on the irrational exuberance in this very niche property market and promote fairer distribution of educational resources. The reasoning behind the policy appears to be that the children of less wealthy families ought not to be barred from access to quality education.
No sooner had the policy been disclosed than parents began to worry about their investments going down the drain. For many, their purchases were driven by the high premium they put on education and by financial considerations, since catchment home prices were long believed to be on a steady upswing.
In order to enroll his daughter in the prestigious Jiangsu Road No.5 Primary School, an elite institution in Changning District, a friend recently spent roughly 5.6 million yuan on an old, dimly-lit, poorly furnished walk-up apartment with about 100 square meters in floor space.
Normally, important financial decisions like this would have demanded circumspection but the herd mentality apparently stripped him of discretion.
By the way, his daughter is only three and attending kindergarten. In China, children normally start primary school at the age of six.
Whether the new policy will have a lasting effect on home prices remains to be seen. Local authorities have taken steps to curb the steep growth of catchment home prices in the past. For instance, a number of districts in Shanghai require that a child must reside for at least five years in a catchment area to be considered eligible for a particular school.
To be fair, the mania for catchment houses isn’t restricted to China only. In the US, many American parents also feel the need to buy houses in nice school districts to ensure their children’s future.
It is understandable that parents want the best for their children. But attendance at a good school is no guarantees of future success. In China, the obsession with school catchment houses is a telling illustration of the typical mentality among Chinese parents — they don’t want their children to “fall behind at the starting line,” to use a common Chinese expression. Nonetheless, education is more like a marathon than a sprint.
Hopefully, the new policy changes will restore reason to overheated segments of the property market as well as to the minds of many desperate parents.
Shanghai Daily intern Li Xiecun contributed to this commentary.
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