OPINION> Commentary
Teachers need better salaries
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-04 07:34

To ensure the income of teachers, they should be paid directly from the country's financial revenues, says an article in Wuhan Evening Post. The following is an excerpt:

Guangdong province in South China will strive to level the income of rural teachers with that of their urban counterparts as well as civil servants. The provincial government also plans to carry out the social security system for rural teachers so that their working and living conditions can be bettered, according to Luo Wei, the education bureau chief of Guangdong province.

The proposal that the salaries of teachers should not be lower than those of civil servants has in fact been raised in China for many years and also has been included into legal documents.

As the Teachers' Law, which went into effect on January 1, 1994, stipulates "the average salaries of teachers should not be lower or higher than the average salaries of the country's civil servants, and should keep rising gradually." The Compulsory Education Law in effect on September 1, 2006, also requires that governments at different levels should guarantee the salaries, welfare and social security of teachers.

The pity is that these legal requirements have not yet been met. According to statistics, a civil servant holding positions above the county level in Guangzhou currently earns 140,000 yuan per year while the headmaster of a common middle school in the city of Guangzhou only earns 50,000-70,000 yuan annually, not to mention the teachers in rural regions.

The world average ratio of educational expenditures to GDP is 4.9 percent. The ratio reaches 5.1 percent in advanced countries and 4.1 percent in underdeveloped countries. In China, this ratio is a far cry from the world average with the number being around 3 percent in recent years. So the government needs to further increase the input in education.

We need the systematic support to make sure the salaries of teachers as high as those of civil servants. To put it specifically, the salaries of teachers can be included into the salary system of civil servants or teachers can be classified into a type of civil servants as in developed countries like France and Germany. That means the salaries and bonuses of teachers in the compulsory education phase should be paid from the financial revenues of the country. A corresponding supervision system should also be put in place to ensure timely payment of this money.

(China Daily 09/04/2008 page8)