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China TEACHERS
Among the most pressing problems facing education reformers was
the scarcity of qualified teachers, which has led to a serious
stunting of educational development. In 1986 there were about 8
million primary- and middle-school teachers in China, but many
lacked professional training. Estimates indicated that in order to
meet the goals of the Seventh Five-Year Plan and realize compulsory
9-year education, the system needed 1 million new teachers for
primary schools, 750,000 new teachers for junior middle schools,
and 300,000 new teachers for senior middle schools. Estimates
predict, however, that the demand for teachers will drop in the
late 1990s because of an anticipated decrease in primary-school
enrollments.
To cope with the shortage of qualified teachers, the State
Education Commission decreed in 1985 that senior-middle-school
teachers should be graduates with two years' training in
professional institutes and that primary-school teachers should be
graduates of secondary schools. To improve teacher quality, the
commission established full-time and part-time (the latter
preferred because it was less costly) in-service training programs.
Primary-school and preschool in-service teacher training programs
devoted 84 percent of the time to subject teaching, 6 percent to
pedagogy and psychology, and 10 percent to teaching methods. Inservice training for primary-school teachers was designed to raise
them to a level of approximately two years' postsecondary study,
with the goal of qualifying most primary-school teachers by 1990.
Secondary-school in-service teacher training was based on a unified
model, tailored to meet local conditions, and offered on a
spare-time basis. Ninety-five percent of its curricula was devoted
to subject teaching, 2 to 3 percent to pedagogy and psychology, and
2 to 3 percent to teaching methods. There was no similar
large-scale in-service effort for technical and vocational
teachers, most of whom worked for enterprises and local
authorities.
By 1985 there were more than 1,000 teacher training schools--an
indispensable tool in the effort to solve the acute shortage of
qualified teachers. These schools, however, were unable to supply
the number of teachers needed to attain modernization goals through
1990. Although a considerable number of students graduated as
qualified teachers from institutions of higher learning, the
relatively low social status and salary levels of teachers hampered
recruitment, and not all of the graduates of teachers' colleges
became teachers. To attract more teachers, China tried to make
teaching a more desirable and respected profession. To this end,
the government designated September 10 as Teachers' Day, granted
teachers pay raises, and made teachers' colleges tuition free. To
further arrest the teacher shortage, in 1986 the central government
sent teachers to underdeveloped regions to train local
schoolteachers.
Because urban teachers continued to earn more than their rural
counterparts and because academic standards in the countryside had
dropped, it remained difficult to recruit teachers for rural areas.
Teachers in rural areas also had production responsibilities for
their plots of land, which took time from their teaching. Rural
primary teachers needed to supplement their pay by farming because
most were paid by the relatively poor local communities rather than
by the state.
Data as of July 1987
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