With just one week to go before China's fall semester, Gao Qing, 11, is getting ready for her fifth year at the Huagang Number 1 Elementary School in Nanjing – the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.

It is also Qing's fifth year in Nanjing.

Qing was raised by her grandma at her hometown of Fuyang in the neighboring Anhui Province, about 355 miles away from Nanjing. Her parents, however, have been working in Nanjing for more than ten years.

Data from the National Statistics Bureau shows there were nearly 300 million rural migrant workers in China in 2018. They are considered significant contributors to social mobility and the stable growth of the world's second-largest economy.

Gao Xingmei, Qing's mother, who worked in a kindergarten, said they can only go back to see their daughter two or three times per year.

Five years ago, they decided to move her to the big city, where she could complete her compulsory education.

"When I came to the city, I felt very happy to be with my parents. The city makes me feel like everything is new," said Qing.

During the two-month-long summer vacation, she chose to stay with parents and took extracurricular activities, instead of returning to Fuyang.

"We are at least happier together, and she can have the same access to educational resources as other children in the city," the mother said.

About 70 percent of students at Huagang school are children of rural migrant workers. Guo Hongxia, the principal, told CGTN that most of them felt like they were "outsiders and had a weak sense of belonging" in the beginning.

According to Guo, many have never been to the cinema and some Western-style restaurants, such as KFC and McDonald's.

"We took them out to experience the city and brought them to places they had never been to before," Guo said.

The school has organized visits to museums and exhibitions to allow them to learn more about the city, she added.

The school was founded in 2014, with about 100 students in three classes. The new semester is expecting about 900 students in five levels.

In Jiangsu Province, about 1.5 million migrant children are enrolled in schools that provide compulsory education, said Li Hongtian, president of Jiangsu Educational Modernization Institute.

According to Li, those migrant students are no different from local students in terms of education access.

"They have governmental fund, good teachers, and an opportunity to take the high school entrance exam," Li continued, adding that such provincial support "greatly brings a more peaceful and content life to generations of migrant families."

Back in 1996, the province of Jiangsu vowed to lead the way in modernizing education in the country. Over the past two decades, the government has set the pace in building a "Jiangsu model," which is evident in how migrant children in the city are given access to education.

"I hope I will do better in the new semester because I also want to do good in junior high," Qing said with confidence. "I have to study hard now so I can achieve my dreams in the future."