AFTER Nanshan and Longhua districts announced their shortage of school slots, Luohu released a pre-notification of an application for school slots yesterday, suggesting that many school-age children might suffer setbacks in applying for slots at public schools in the district, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

    The Luohu District Education Bureau said that purchasing or renting apartments in the district can no longer secure school slots as the district has a shortage of room at the public schools.

    As more women in Shenzhen are expecting to bear second children, school slots have become more competitive than ever before.

    Statistics show that Shenzhen had more than 200,000 newborns in 2016. The number of pregnant women with a second child has increased by 32 percent compared with the same period in 2015.

    The intense competition to secure school slots among children and their families was one of the most heatedly discussed issues at this year’s “Two Sessions” with many political advisers and lawmakers concerned about the inadequate and unbalanced school slots around the city.

    “The allocation of school slots is very unbalanced because a lot of people purchased cheaper apartments in areas outside of the original Special Economic Zone (SEZ), where the educational resources are not as good as the districts inside the SEZ,” said Huang Xiang, one of the deputies from the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress.

    Taking Longgang District as an example, Huang said that many students with Shenzhen household registration (hukou) would have to attend private schools because the public schools in Longgang wouldn’t be able to accommodate many more students.

    Huang said that this was a consequence of decisions that were made a few years ago and that the district had to encourage more private schools because it did not have enough funds to build public schools.

    Though Shenzhen has greatly enhanced its investment in building schools in areas outside of the former SEZ, it has still not been enough for students in Longgang and Longhua districts.

    In previous years, the education department gave allowances for children who qualified to attend public schools but couldn’t get a slot, so they could attend private schools with the subsidies. However, presently even the private schools are facing challenges enrolling more students.

    The Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau responded that the city had already made efforts by enlarging or building more public schools. It replied that Shenzhen had invested over 10 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) on expanding and building schools from 2014 to 2017.

    What’s more, the bureau said that 75 percent of the newly added school slots would be allocated to these areas, while the new slots in high schools are going to be in districts outside of the former SEZ, namely districts like Longgang, Bao’an, Longhua and so on.

    The bureau also said it is considering improving the quality of teaching staff at local schools by hiring teachers with higher qualifications from around the country.

    (Zhang Qian)