Migrant children are eligible to attend local primary and middle schools, but barred from Shanghai's high schools.
Campaigners say poor migrant children live without any emotional support and some of them often become involved in criminal activities.
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"When I heard that, I was so sad, " said Ms. Richeux, a 43-year-old director of a charity for educating migrant children.
Some migrant children are particularly difficult to reach, especially the children of migrant agricultural workers who tend to be highly mobile.
Schools, and the education they provide, are the preferred vehicle to assist migrant children in the processes of social and cultural integration.
Because migrant children whose language and culture are unfamiliar find it immediately difficult to make friends with local children, sports coaches and trainers play a particularly important role.
Shanghai claims last year to have become the first city in China to provide free education for all migrant children, mostly in state-run schools, with some in subsidised private ones.
Schools are supposed to even out the odds among children of different backgrounds, but by the time migrant children arrive at Thomas Morus, its director thinks, it is almost too late.
Shanghai had 170, 000 students enrolled in high school in 2010, but there were 570, 000 migrant children aged 15 to 19 living in the city who were unable to attend those schools.
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In the UK (England, Wales and Scotland for the purposes of this study) 12% of non-migrant children said they had been bullied in the last three months, compared to 15% of first generation migrants.
Chu Zhaohui, of the Ministry of Education's Central Institute for Educational Research, says Beijing could afford to accommodate all of its more than 400, 000 migrant children, some 40, 000 of whom have little choice but to use unlicensed schools.
Life in Beijing is much better than back in rural Hebei, says Li: his wages cover the family's rent, tuition for the underground school for migrant children that his kids attend, as well as the odd night of karaoke.
The organisation spoke to 53 "irregular migrant" children and parents in the two cities, from countries including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Jamaica, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq and the Kurdish region of Turkey.
But all 300 of them have one thing in common: they are children of migrant workers who have come to Beijing in search of a better life.
And for many of China's poorest families, including the children of millions of migrant labourers, finding any school at all can be a problem.
Up to 125 million migrant workers and 80 million unregistered children may have eluded census takers a decade ago, when the last national count was conducted.
By one estimate, there are 300 migrant schools catering to 500, 000 children.
With just four days to go before polling, UKIP hijacked the entire campaign by revealing that two of its local members had been stopped from fostering children from an "EU migrant community" because of the party's "multi-cultural policies".
Texans Ruben , Daniel and David Perez , the sons of migrant farm workers, worked in the fields as children.
There are also calls to enhance the services available to support Britain's Roma communities, to ensure children can maintain their cultural links if taken into care - although the coalition government cut the Migrant Impact Fund in 2010.
For instance, accusations of dishonour may emerge because someone from an older migrant generation remains utterly tied to the culture or code of their village - and fails to accept their children have been brought up in modern British society with all that goes with that.
The detention of a migrant worker in Shanghai for allegedly stabbing his wife in the abdomen while arguing over where to raise their children and then throwing his one-year-old son on the floor headfirst while visiting his injured wife in hospital has attracted widespread calls for better psychological support for the floating population, says China Daily.
Two groups are particularly eager to avoid the census takers: migrant workers, who usually lack permits to live in their new cities, and so-called "black children, " who were born in violation of China's one-child policy.
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