In the last three years, Ma Huiming has visited some 100 primary boarding schools in rural China, bringing him closer to a significantly large yet often overlooked segment of the country’s population—the roughly 9 million rural primary boarding school students.
A project manager for Crowing Home, a Beijing-based non-profit organization committed to supporting rural boarding schools, Ma has dedicated more than a decade to this cause.
Ma shared insights into the nature of these institutions during an online forum about education on January 24.
The emergence of rural boarding schools can be traced back to a policy issued in 2001 to close and merge schools in rural China. The policy was introduced in response to demographic changes
