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Rural school teachers to enjoy better conditions
By Ma Lie (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-15 06:33
XI'AN: 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 kilometres 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 kilometres 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 02/15/2006 page3)
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