A new education policy issued early this month has enabled migrant worker Qin Lihong to make long-term plans for her family.

Qin finally decided to settle down in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, after living there for eight years, because the provincial government now allows children of migrant workers, like her daughter, to take the college entrance exam there even if they are not permanent residents.

Since different provinces adopt different textbooks and teaching and exam systems, having to take the entrance exam outside the province where the students have studied may put them at a huge disadvantage.

"Our household registrations are not in Qingdao, so our daughter would have had to take the exam in our hometown instead of here, which meant the whole family would have to move back for the exam," said the 32-year-old saleswoman at an electronic appliance store.

Stay or go?

Although Qin and her husband earn 5,000 yuan (794 U.S. dollars) per month on average, they like Qingdao, a prosperous coastal city.

"That's why we were always wavering between deciding to go home or stay here," she said.

Under the new policy, their daughter, who is currently in her fourth year of primary school, can continue her education in Qingdao without the trouble of transferring to another school.

In Shandong schools, the number of children from migrant families totaled 745,100 last year, a year-on-year rise of 17 percent.

"We adopted this policy hoping to improve the education equality among all students in the province," said Si Jingui, an official in charge of student affairs under Shandong's local education authority.

"People in China should enjoy equal rights and interests in terms of politics, the economy and culture, regardless of whether they live in cities or in the countryside," said Xie Chuntao, a professor with the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

The report to the 18th CPC National Congress has pledged to safeguard social fairness and justice, as "fairness and justice are inherent requirements of socialism with Chinese characteristics."

The report said the CPC will work to establish, in due course, a system guaranteeing social equity featuring "equal rights, equal opportunities and fair rules for all," as well as foster a fair social environment and ensure people's equal right to governance participation and development.

Trouble for locals

About 1,000 miles away from coastal Qingdao, 34-year-old kindergarten teacher Zhu Yingxiang works to promote equal access to education for another group of children -- local kids in rural areas of northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Zhu has only 30 students, aged three to five, and they all live in two villages in a mountainous area of Qinghai.

To ensure the children don't have to travel far for schooling, Zhu shuttles between the two villages to give preschool lessons, including folk song singing, storytelling and riddle solving, to the shepherds' children.