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Pay them better

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-09 07:51

Guangdong promised last week that primary and middle school teachers not on government payroll would be relieved of their financial hardship in two years. This is good news for more than 50,000 such teachers working mostly in remote rural areas.

Daike Laoshi (teachers employed temporarily) is what they are called in Chinese. They were hired to fill in teaching positions that were supposed to have been taken by well-trained teachers on government payroll but such teachers were not available at the time.

It is not that there is a lack of graduates from normal colleges, but the fact is such graduates shun the poor working and living conditions in such schools. The "temporary" teachers, though not on government payroll, have played important roles in providing kids in remote rural areas with compulsory education.

Not being on government payroll means their income is not from the government budget. Therefore how much they get depends on how much a local government can provide for them from their finance. Their income is usually much lower than that of their counterparts on government payroll. And neither do they enjoy the social benefits formal teachers do. Yet they are doing the same job in much worse working and living conditions.

The lowest pay for such teachers is only around 400 yuan ($60) a month in Guangdong, less than one-10th of the income of their counterparts on government payroll. With such meager incomes, they can hardly make ends meet. Some working in wealthier townships can get more than 1,000 yuan a month, but still much lower than what regular teachers get.

It is true that many of them may not be qualified teachers since they do not have university diplomas and enough training. But they have to be hired until qualified people are encouraged by attractive incentives to take the teaching positions. It is unfair that they get much lower pay for doing the same job.

There were more than 370,000 such teachers nationwide by the end of 2007, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education. The ministry has conducted investigations into their cases and urged local governments to improve their working and living conditions.

What Guangdong is doing sets a good example for other parts of the country.

Taking care of teachers not on government payroll actually means supporting education in remote and poor rural areas.

But it is not enough to only raise the income of such teachers. Investments need to be made in training them so that their teaching quality is improved.

(China Daily 09/09/2008 page8)