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Based on sampling data of 2008 and 2011, this paper adopts the ordered probit model to investigate the determinants of academic performance for two cohorts of migrant children in Beijing. We found: (1) Age (different directions for the two cohorts), being a girl, family income, mother's education, parental expectations, parental tutoring, and the degree of satisfaction with schools were associated with children's academic ranking in the class for both cohorts. (2) Family income only mattered for the 2008 cohort and only for girls; additionally for 2008, educational expectations, study time and being a student leader were significant predictors. (3) Heterogeneous effects by gender, by education stage and by school type were also documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A randomized control trial study was conducted on two samples of Beijing preschoolers. • Results showed positive educational effect of a children's museum on children's cognitive development. • The offer of 18 free museum tickets led to a 14.1 % increase of the pre-score for participants in the family model. • The treatment effect for participants in the kindergarten model was less significant. • The new evidence suggests the educational value of children's museums. In the western world, children's museums have a long history and they experienced ever-increasing development in the past few decades. However, China has just started to introduce such museums within recent years. We designed a randomized controlled trial to examine the educational effects of regular visits to a children's museum on young children's cognitive development in China, and it is the first Chinese experimental study for this topic. Based on two samples from Beijing, results indicated that there was a statistically significant effect of young children's museum visits on their cognitive development. The treatment effect was most strong for the total cognitive score: a 14.1 % increase of the pre-score for the control group in the family model. The treatment effect of the kindergarten model was less significant than that of the family model. The educational promise of the children's museum may indicate the importance of play and informal learning settings for children's cognitive development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Regular visits to a children's museum accompanied by parents had a positive effect on preschoolers' originality score. • A beneficial effect was also found on the fluency component of creativity in the form of preschool group visit. • Public preschool attendance, visits to science museums, and parents' latitude on children's freedom matter. • Male gender and geographic location of the family had an influence. As one of the potential contextual factors for creativity development, children's museum has been introduced to China from the western world in recent years, with the aim to offer a new informal educational environment to enhance children's creativity. Based on experimental data for two groups of 4-year-old preschoolers (218 for the family mode and 202 for the preschool mode) from Beijing with an appropriately one-year long intervention (September 2017 to July 2018), this study examines the effect of regular visits to a children's museum and other education environmental factors on young children's creativity measured by Torrance's Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) test. Results indicate that in terms of family visit, compared to the control group, the intervention that offers 18 times free tickets to visit a children's museum significantly improved the experiment group's originality (a sub-measure of creativity) by an additional 34.51 %. A beneficial effect of this intervention was also found in improving children's fluency from the sample of preschool group visit (46.80 %). In addition, family education environment factors such as public preschool attendance, frequency of visits to science museums, and the degree of parents' latitude were also found to positively affect creativity. Children's personal features such as sex and geographic location of the family are also found to be related with children's creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]