The central government has mapped out a national development
blueprint for rural compulsory education to provide better
conditions for teachers and to tackle staff shortages.
At present, a large number of rural teachers are working in vast
rural areas in non-State official establishments.
The teachers, called daike or temporary teachers, could be
employed in more official capacities in the years to come under the
blueprint.
The national educational blueprint issued recently paints a
brighter future for rural education.
"The wages for rural teachers may be included in the budget of
the Ministry of
Education in the future," Lu Yugang, deputy director of the
personnel department of the ministry, was quoted as saying by
China Business Times.
"We propose that a mechanism to guarantee the wage of all
teachers be further consummated, and included in the budget. At the
same time, we will also send more qualified teachers to work in
primary and middle schools in remote and poverty-stricken areas,"
Lu said.
Among the areas that will benefit from the new proposals is
Shaanxi Province.
Teachers there have been playing an important role in rural
education, especially in the remote and poverty-stricken rural
areas, in past decades.
"Their future, to a great degree, relate directly to the rural
children's destiny and future, and also relates to the compulsory
education sector in the backward western China," said Zhang Yinwei,
an official with Shaanxi Provincial Education Bureau.
In Shaanxi, an economically underdeveloped inland province in
northwest China, there are about 25,000 such teachers who teach
more than 500,000 pupils in the province's remote poor rural areas,
according to local education authority.
The provincial education authority's investigation shows that
these teachers only receive 100 yuan (US$12) on average per month,
causing them difficulties.
"However, they are still persevering with their posts," the
official said.
One of the teachers who will be welcoming the proposed changes
is Yang Shuangcheng.
The 40-year-old is the only teacher at Fanjiatai Primary School,
which is located in the remote mountainous Fanjiatai Village in
Longxian County, a State-level poverty-stricken county in western
Shaanxi.
Receiving 130 yuan (US$16) per month, Yang teaches 10 pupils
aged from nine to 13, who are living in four villages around the
school.
Like other people in the villages, Yang lives without power
supply and prepares his lessons under a kerosene lamp in the
evening.
"The 10 pupils are in two grades and I teach them language and
mathematics. When it snows or rains, the kids suffer because the
road is too difficult for them to walk to school. One of my pupils
lives some 10 kilometers away from the school and cannot come to
school if the weather is bad," Yang said.
Corn flour and pickled cabbage are the main food for Yang and
his family, and they have to walk more than 30 kilometers to buy
articles of daily use, such as salt and oil, in Dianziping
Township, the nearest township from the villages.
There are about 260 temporary teachers like Yang, one-tenth of
the overall number of teachers in Longxian County, who are working
in remote rural villages, according to Wang Cangyu, chief of the
Personnel Section of Longxian County Education Bureau.
Wang told China Daily that there are 207 primary and middle
schools in the county, with 46,134 students and 2,374 professional
teachers altogether.
"The ratio of teachers and students in our county is 1:20, which
basically conforms to the stipulations issued by the Ministry of
Education," the official said.
However, most of the teachers are working in the county seat or
township areas, and almost no one wants to stay in remote rural
schools for long.
"To solve the shortage of professional teachers, the local
government has to employ 260 temporary teachers for 44 rural
schools in remote rural villages. Like Yang, many of them live in
poor conditions," Wang said.
According to the official, the county wanted to pay these
teachers more, but could not afford to. "If we pay 100 yuan
(US$12.3) more for each teacher per month, the county will pay more
than 300,000 yuan(US$37,000) annually for the 260 teachers. It is
too difficult."
Luo Yangmin, an education expert and professor in Shaanxi Normal
University, said that the introduction of an employment system to
the rural education sector will help provide more teachers for
rural areas, and financial support from central government will
encourage more teachers to work in rural areas.
(China Daily February 15, 2006)