Schools of this kind lack the superior facilities and learning conditions common in ordinary schools in China. As such, the students typically have no opportunity to learn English from foreign teachers. Even a day of practicing English with a native speaker is considered a huge benefit and extremely rare.
[Of course, before you try this on your own, be sure to remember that anytime you stray off the straight and narrow in China, you need permission from the authorities and school officials, and that can take time and a lot of probing!]
I wasn't there to eradicate poverty...although as children of migrant workers...they certainly lack the finer things in life. China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010) —a number equivalent to 2/3 the population of the United States or 4X the number of people who emigrated to American from Europe over a century—have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years.
The first school for migrants to win government approval in Beijing was opened in 1993 by a teacher from a rural school who was shocked to find that many children of migrant workers were basically illiterate because their parents were too busy to help them and because they lacked residency status necessary to attend local schools. The Beijing Century Experimental School, where I volunteered for a day, was founded by a migrant worker in 1998 who luckily was able to pull himself up, and get this school opened.
In total, I was in China for six days. Of those, two were free days. I volunteered for one of those free days. The rest of the time was spent in meetings. So I ended up volunteering 50% of my free time. I was able to learn a great deal from the experience and the children had a native English speaker to practice with for a day.
But the best result of the experience is that I was able to alert a friend who works at one of the premier language schools in Beijing, Live The Language. He joined me at the school and by the end of the day committed several of his students each week to volunteer at the school to speak English with the children. So my day of test driving volunteer abroad resulted in possibly 800 hours of native English speakers at this particular school.
What a difference a day makes!
We would love to hear about any test driving experiences you have had. Take advantage of the comments section below.