The last mile of poverty alleviation through education

Retaining and constructing teaching points is conducive to keeping rural children schooled

Many rural Chinese villages are situated in mountainous areas. Their population is scattered and transportation facilities are poor. Retaining and constructing a certain number of necessary teaching points allows children nearby to be schooled and keeps the number of school dropouts under control. In 2015, teaching points in county towns accounted for 35.8% of all primary schools (primary school and teaching points). They enrolled a total of 4.025 million pupils, which accounted for 6.1% of all primary school pupils. There were 116,000 pupils in combined classes, accounting for 0.17% of all primary school pupils. Although rural teaching points didn’t school a significant number of students, they gathered a group of children from extremely poor families who could not afford city education. Those students belonged to the last 20% of vulnerable and disadvantaged families. They belong to the targeted group for poverty alleviation, and once they’re given adequate education, poverty by generation will be effectively cut off. They are the challenge of modern education. In order to achieve the fixed goal of basic education modernization by 2020, we must understand the characteristics and types of rural teaching points, as well as strengthen their construction under the principles of fairness, precision, quality and performance.

The retained teaching points are mostly located in remote mountainous areas where transportation is difficult, which is mostly the reason why they have come to exist. Although the rural education system has undergone a lot of changes and schools have been redistributed since the 2000s, these teaching points have been kept because the locations are very difficult to reach and the conditions are harsh. Some commonalities of retained teaching points include a low number of pupils (usually fewer than 20), incomplete grade structures (only first and second grade or pre-school classes), irregular teaching methods (several subjects taught together, combined classes, and small classes), poor teaching facilities, and few teachers. These retained teaching points are mostly in underdeveloped western regions such as the provinces of Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Gansu. It’s most difficult for these places to modernize education.

Recovered teaching points are mostly located in hilly areas and flatlands where schools are far away, traveling is dangerous and board and lodging costs are high. These teaching points were recovered due to excessive removal and integration of such facilities. Such teaching points are often far away from schools in counties and towns, school relatively more children (usually over 50 or 60 pupils) and have smaller classes (about a dozen pupils in each class). Recovered teaching points usually have relatively complete grade structures, adequate teachers and good teaching facilities. Their conditions are not too bad, but as they’re far away from county towns where most teachers live, teachers tend to shun these places, which makes building dormitories for teachers a priority.

Outdated teaching points are mostly located in administrative villages or small county towns where there are few industries, inadequate economic activities and a high percentage of residents leaving home to seek work. Migrant workers from these places have higher incomes and are dissatisfied with the teaching quality of these teaching points. They have opted to send their children to schools in bigger cities, making these teaching points of lesser quality gradually redundant and outdated. According to a survey, 48.6% of village children go to schools in counties and cities due to inadequate education quality back home, while 54.6% of the parents have clearly expressed willingness to send their children back to local schools if quality was improved. Outdated teaching points have a certain source of students and could attract more students and relieve the pressure of schools in counties and cities once their quality is improved.