The last mile of poverty alleviation through education

Slow upgrade and standard difficulty

Currently there isn’t a national standard for rural teaching points, and local governments have nothing to refer to when constructing teaching points. There is no accountability mechanism, while in provinces and regions where the number of teaching points is high, some places should have opted to only build a few exemplary teaching points for the sole purpose of official inspection, yet failing to realize teaching point standardization or full coverage. Even in places where local governments have put together standardized teaching point projects, these did not last long due to limited education resource input, slow upgrade of teaching facilities, inadequate teacher training, and outdated teaching methods, which all caused the low utilization rate of teaching equipment, and in the end, caused a regression to traditional chalk and board teaching methods. Take Internet access for example: in 2015 as many as 91.5% of primary schools in city districts had access to the Internet, compared to 76.9% in county districts and a mere 47.4% in villages.

Unbalanced and incomplete structures

In recent years, many new teachers have been added to the staff of rural teaching points. Teachers under the age of 35 now account for 45.9% of all teachers, while those 50 years or older account for 26.8%. Research has found that substitute teachers account for 29.8% of regular teachers at teaching points, while a whopping 83.8% of teachers at teaching points in western rural areas teach more than two subjects. In terms of student teacher ratio, one regular teacher at a teaching point teaches only 11.3 students, which is far below the 1:19 national standard. However, the class to teacher ratio is 1:1.8 at teaching points, still lower than the 1:2.2 national standard. Subjects such as English, arts and science are also much less taught and teachers for these subjects are sometimes difficult to find. Classes on ethics, science and IT are respectively taught in 70.8%, 56.3% and 29.2% of the teaching points. Teacher quality also varies largely. Math teachers from cities, counties and teaching points scored an average of 78.9 points, 60.8 points and 38.5 points respectively.

The piece of article is written by Wu Zhihui, head of the education department of the Northeast Normal University. And it is translated by Ai Yang.