Recent years saw China's teacher contingent being strengthened successively by enlarging their scales and improving their quality and structure. On the occasion of the 17th Teacher's Day that falls on every September 10 statistics from the Ministry of Education show that there are more than 10 million in-service teachers in China, basically meeting the needs for China’s educational reform and development.

According to the statistics, there are 221 teacher-training colleges with 1,099,700 students on campus and 683 teacher-training schools with in-study students reaching 769,800 in China. In the “Ninth Five-year Plan” period, some one million and some 1.4 million students have graduated from teacher-training colleges and schools respectively, and some 280,000 middle-school teachers and 780,000 primary school teachers have received qualification training respectively.

In addition, China also actively launched non-educational-level training for teachers in primary and middle schools throughout the country. Thus, the foundation has been laid for carrying out completely the teacher qualification system and building up a formalized, legalized, and professional teacher team. In 2000, qualified rates on teachers’ educational level of China’s primary, junior and senior middle schools were respectively increased to 96.9 percent, 87.1 percent, and 68.4 percent from the original 88.9 percent, 69.1 percent, and 55.2 percent in 1995. And in 2000, some 20 percent teachers in primary schools are of college schooling or above, some 14.2 percent teachers in senior middle schools are the college graduates or above, and some 31.3 percent professors in colleges and universities are at postgraduate level or above in education.

(People's Daily 09/10/2001)