More than 136,000 children with Beijing residency permits, or hukou, are attending schools in different districts or counties in the city from where they live, increasing family expense and causing traffic problems.

A report released recently by the Beijing academy of educational science showed that students who commute daily account for almost 15 percent of the total number of middle and primary school students in the city.

As many as 73,000 students from Chaoyang district and another 44,000 from Fengtai travel to schools in other districts every day.

Commuting has increased the student families' costs, made children's lives tougher, as well as worsened the traffic situation in Beijing, the report said.

"Less attractive educational resources in their own communities are the reason why they go to schools in other districts," Guo Zhicheng, a researcher with the research and development center of the Beijing academy of educational science, was quoted as saying by the Beijing News on Friday.

Guo said people buy properties in local areas because the prices are relatively reasonable.

However, after finding that the standards of local education are not as good as in other districts, they sometimes choose to send their children elsewhere.

"Improving the quality of education in those local communities and balancing the educational resources around the city are the top tasks for handling this social issue," Guo said.

According to the current compulsory education policy in Beijing, students have the right to a place in the school closest to their homes.

This policy has driven up the prices of housing near top schools by almost 30 percent more than in other areas, the Beijing Youth Daily reported yesterday.

For example, the housing prices in Taiyang Gongyuan have doubled after the announcement of a plan to build a middle school attached to the Renmin University of China in September.

The apartments were priced as 18,000 yuan per sq m in April, but they now sell for as much as 45,000 yuan per sq m, according to focus.cn, a real estate website.

"The new middle school will not be available until 2011, but the apartments are selling well. Residents have the chance to enroll their children at the new school. Now we only have two apartments, both larger than 200-sq-m left, after we started selling the third phase of our project one month ago," said a salesperson from developer Beijing Evertrust Land Company Ltd.

(China Daily 12/07/2009 page14)