Qualified teachers should not be taken as liability

SOME 172 SENIOR TEACHERS IN SHAYANG COUNTY, Central China's Hubei province, have been made temporarily redundant and re-employed as full-time security guards by schools because of the continuous decrease in the number of school-age children. They can get their jobs back when more students are enrolled, local education officials said. Comments:

Re-employing senior teachers as security guards is not only a considerable waste of qualified teachers, but also a heavy financial burden on the local government. The "quitting mechanism" is designed to optimize and improve the free flow of teachers, not cutting loose senior teachers without any consideration for their great contributions to the elementary education system. Their legal interests have to be protected, too.

Beijing News, Sept 23