Rural teachers need more than funding

The State Council, or the Cabinet, recently announced a five-year plan that includes raising the wages of teachers in rural regions and bestowing honors, which is aimed at solving the problem that rural primary and middle schools lack teaching staff. Comments:

Domestic compulsory education is mainly supported by local instead of central finance. As a result, counties that are poor often fail to invest enough in local education, the majority of which goes to urban schools; rural schools often get only a very small percentage. In order to support rural education, the central government needs to provide more funding, and pay the money to rural teachers directly instead of through local governments, because the local officials may very possibly misappropriate the money for other purposes or embezzle it.

Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, June 9