The last mile of poverty alleviation through education

Rural teaching points face numerous issues and challenges

In 2012, the State Council has issued an opinion on regulating the adjustment of rural school distribution, since then the trend of removing and integrating rural teaching points has been effectively curbed. The next three years even saw an increase of 22,500 teaching points. However, it must be reminded that the overall trend before 2030 when China’s urbanization rate will near 70% show the decline of retained teaching points, the marginal growth of recovered teaching points, and the constant growth of outdated teaching points. According to research, in 2015 the number of students enrolled in teaching points accounted for only 78% of the target number. The biggest problem facing rural teaching points now is lack of hope and confidence Namely, local governments worry that the growing population mobility will affect the economic outcome of teaching points, parents are concerned about low teaching quality, and teachers worry about removal and integration of their schools which could leave them jobless.

Lack of funding and low benefits

Teaching points are irregular schools that cannot guarantee basic operation even with standard input, while an above standard input on the other hand does not produce economic benefits on any scale either. With limited educational resources, “sensible policymakers” first allocate funds to schools in counties and towns where economic returns are the biggest. Impacted by such discriminative policies, rural teaching points find it difficult to gain access to fair, adequate and effective local governmental and financial support. Many places apply the “vertical split mode” to manage teaching points, where the education bureau manages county schools, county schools manage village schools, and village schools manage teaching points. Even so, China has introduced a policy allowing teaching points with fewer than 100 students to receive 100 students’ share of per capita public educational funds. These funds are only allocated to county school accounts, while the management method of county schools sometimes does not allocate adequate fund in a timely manner to village schools and teaching points, and sometimes teaching points have to rely on teachers’ salaries and public donations to function.