A policy whereby students have to take the gaokao, or university entrance examination, in the place where they are registered, regardless of where they live, will remain unchanged in the capital, despite officials from the Ministry of Education encouraging authorities to loosen the restriction.

Du Yubo, vice-minister of education, said at a press conference on March 28 that the country is encouraging local governments to roll out plans to allow students to take the exam where they live rather than where they are registered.

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"Officials from the Ministry of Education are investigating the best way and timing to reform the policy, but until a decision is made, we can't do anything," said Gao Fuqin, director of the Beijing Examinations Authority's university admission office during a press briefing on Wednesday.

Gao said that as long as students get Beijing hukou, or permanent residency, before May 12, the official exam registration date, they will be eligible to attend the make-or-break examination in Beijing, otherwise they will have to sit it in their hometown.

According to the national census results of 2005, Beijing had 3.6 million residents without local hukou. Although they live, work and pay taxes in the city, their children have to sit the gaokao in their hometown.

Taking the gaokao in other cities makes the highly competitive examination even harder for migrant students, as the enrollment quota for the city's universities is much higher for Beijing students than for others. For instance, Peking University enrolled 101 liberal arts students from Beijing in 2010, but only 24 from Shandong province.

Yang Yuanqing, the mother of a 15-year-old boy, started a petition last year with 381 parents asking for the same treatment for non-Beijing hukou children living in the city taking the gaokao as those who do hold a Beijing hukou.

Yang, who has worked as a nanny in the capital for more than 20 years, told METRO that she had to send her son to a high school in Shandong province to take the gaokao since he does not have a Beijing hukou, even though he was born in Beijing and grew up here.

A total of 76,007 students from Beijing will sit this year's university entrance examination, 4,234 students less than year. 25,418 students are liberal arts students and the rest are science students, Gao said during the briefing.

Beijing Morning Post reported that the central government has injected 6.2 billion yuan in the last three years to enable 80 percent of migrant children to receive compulsory education in their place of residence rather than place of registration.