Policy to send ‘outstanding’ educators to schools in the countryside for at least a year is part of government drive to ease poverty in remote areas
When the new school year starts in autumn, some 10,000 teachers will come out of retirement in China and return to the classroom, but in a new and mostly unfamiliar setting – underfunded rural schools.
Beijing is sending “outstanding” retired or retiring educators aged 65 or under to the remote areas under its “Silver Age Lecture Plan”, a new programme that is part of the government’s campaign to alleviate poverty in the countryside, according to the Ministry of Education.
Those selected to take part will spend at least one year working in schools located in regions targeted by the poverty alleviation push, until the programme ends in 2020, the ministry said.
It is the latest in a series of initiatives designed to boost education standards in poor rural areas, including ethnic minority-dominated regions and border provinces such as Xinjiang, home to the country’s Uygur Muslim population.
While some education experts welcome expanding the rural teaching pool, they say the new policy is unlikely to ease China’s greater educational problem, the widening urban-rural education gap. That is because the programme fails to address the staggering inequity in economic well-being that is at the heart of the rural teacher shortage, they say.
“The living conditions in remote rural regions are improving,” said Wang Dan, a professor of education at the University of Hong Kong. “But despite this, the urban-rural gap – not just in education but also living standards – is getting wider because the problem is not being checked at the root.”
Ma Jun, who teaches at a village boarding school in Zizhou county, Shaanxi province, was pessimistic about the plan to use retired teachers to educate rural pupils.
Older teachers might not have the right mindset to teach rural children, she said.
“Their values and thinking are often outdated, and their teaching methods would be unlikely to be innovative or flexible,” said Ma, who acknowledged that she has no experience working with older teachers.
“Rural children are already lagging behind children from the cities due to economic and geographical constraints,” she said.
