About Nujiang Fugong Primary

From Teacher Yang:

“Fugong Primary School is a public boarding school. There are over 500 students and 30 teachers between first grade to sixth grade. It has 13 classrooms in total. The President is Mr. Duo Lee. As it is compulsory education, all books are free. Many students here are growing up with hardships, including all the challenges of one-parent families for some, left-behind children and disease. Each family here is basically the same, financially unstable. Most students wear flip flops throughout the whole school year although it is very cold in the winter. The geographical location adds more difficulty. Many kids have to walk a few dozen kilometers of mountain road to school because there is no public road available.

…Our teachers work very hard managing students from morning until night. All students are from the local area and other surrounding villages. School is scheduled 7 days per week, with no weekends but there is a short break every two weeks. In general, the expenses for students include: a fee to travel home when school recesses for the short break (our students have to climb the mountain after they arrive the bus station in the middle; in the event there are no available roads, some students have to walk mountain roads all the way back to their homes); medical costs (currently, these payments are all covered by teachers, as many students run out of money within one or two days after school resumes); and

other expenses to purchase school supplies and stationary.

When school resumes, parents will prepare some pocket money, usually 10 or 20 RMB, which is to be kept with teachers. The expenditure plan is about 0.5 or 1 RMB per day. The school break runs from July 13, 2015 to August 25, 2015. Students here have no vocational classes to attend. Instead, all of them will do farm work for their parents at home during the recess period.”