Make rural teachers an enviable profession

"as long as I have a tone, I won't make them unable to afford to study." Ye Lianping, 91 years old this year, lives in Buchen Village, Wujiang Town, Hexian County, Anhui Province, with white hair and a hunched back. He still insists on taking classes and correcting homework. His love and persistence in education is awe-inspiring. Rural teachers stick to the countryside and lift the dreams of rural children one by one.

For a long time, the state has attached great importance to the construction of the contingent of teachers, and it is encouraging to mention that "to rejuvenate the country must first strengthen teachers". With the implementation of the Rural teacher support Program (2015 / 2020), general subject teacher training has been carried out in many areas, and training programs such as "integration of arts and science", "one specialty and multiple abilities" and "sectional training" have been introduced.

Li Changan, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a special commentator for China Rural Voice, believes that most of these programs are aimed at how county teachers "teach well," and rarely involve the problem of teachers "being able to get down and stay."

Teachers are the bearers and implementers of education. The core problem of developing rural education is to bring up a number of high-quality rural teachers. The practice of implementing general subject teachers in primary schools is put forward in the "Rural teacher support Program (2015 ~ 2020)". General subject teachers in primary schools refer to the encyclopedic teachers who are virtuous, knowledgeable, literate and martial, able to draw and sing, and versatile. He needs to be competent in the teaching of English and Chinese courses in primary school, as well as to master any two skills in music, dance, art and calligraphy. In the current teacher training system in China, this is undoubtedly a new thing, but also put forward higher requirements for teachers. However, although this approach can better solve the problem of how to "teach well", how to make more talented teachers "go down, stay, and teach well" has become a major problem for many rural primary schools. Due to low relative wages, poor welfare benefits, poor working environment and other reasons, some young teachers in rural areas can not stay, backbone teachers either go to cities and towns, or go to better-paid private schools, the phenomenon of teacher loss is prominent.

Li Changan believes that in order to solve these problems, we can start from two levels: first, at the social level, we should establish a better incentive mechanism to attract talents to the countryside with better policies; second, at the individual level, we should raise salaries and pay, and warm rural teachers with practical actions.

Therefore, in order to develop rural basic education and consolidate and improve teaching quality, we must make more efforts to improve the treatment of rural teachers and improve the working environment. That is to say, the construction of rural teachers should be placed in the strategic position of priority development. On the one hand, it is necessary to broaden the source of rural teachers, smooth the channels for college graduates and urban teachers to teach in rural schools, and gradually form an incentive mechanism of "the more grass-roots, the more difficult, the higher the status treatment". On the other hand, we should constantly increase the salaries and welfare benefits of rural teachers, care about their growth and development, and warm rural teachers with practical actions, so that rural teachers can "go down, stay and teach well". Of course, fundamentally speaking, efforts should be made to achieve a balanced allocation of urban and rural education resources and speed up the realization of equity in urban and rural education. Only the equalization of urban and rural education has been basically achieved, then the problem of retaining rural teachers will be easily solved.

Reporter: Ji Yingying

Editor of the manuscript: Li Weimin

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