Human-Error Processor

I was hired as a contract teacher 3 years ago, with salary only 1/3 of official teachers. There were several other teachers like me before, but I didn’t see any of them this time. I was told they are “suggested” to leave under the new national policy to “clean up” all the contract teachers. Now all the teachers hired are official and certificated. But this “clean up” process was some time cruel because some contract teachers have taught for years and didn’t receive anything for compensation. It really depends on where you teacher, I was told. In some richer regions, more than 80% of contract teachers are recruited as official ones.

Salary for official teachers has been greatly improved. Long-Long, my former roommate told me that he now earn about 700 yuan (about $100) a month, about 150 more than 3 years ago. And Xiao even earns 750 for his administrative position in the school. “But all the prices for oils, foods go up recently.” Long-Long told me.

All the students don’t have too pay tuition now. Central government has made commitment for continuing investing in rural education. And the policy is carried out through different level of administrations fast.Since last year, all the rural students in 5 western economically less developed provinces were exempted from tuition in primary and lower secondary level. Xiao shows the school account book to me. “Now we only collect 150 yuan a semester misc fees, which is a small amount even for rural families.” That money is used for repairing/maintaining school facilities, and buying coal in winter for heating.

“But we still don’t have money for new school buildings.” Xiao also said, “Now it’s a big concern because of those collapses in Sichuan after earthquake you know.” They now get money for daily usage, but now enough to do any major renovation.

“Money is not a big concern.” Xiao said. “The government has pouring a lot of money into rural education and you know, the situation is improving during the years. Though we still can’t compared with urban schools (on money) but is far better” I agree with that. I still remember when I was here 3 years ago, students still have to pay 200 a semester. Now those students who boards at school even get subsidy from government, 1.5 per day for dining. Usually enough for rural kids.

So what do you think are still missing and with urgent needs in school today I asked.

We should teach the students how to be good person. Xiao said.

He told me there are more local violence and thefts caused by students and it’s very hard to manage the classroom these days. “Students just know more and they are not obeying. And their parents have gone out for working. All the responsibilities are thrown to schools. But what can we do?”

“And I think we should change our evaluation system too.” He added up, “The school still like old days, all we care about is graduation rates and how many students could go to key high schools. But only less than 20 percent could go to high school in total.”

Should we care more about the rest of them? What do they need? I am wondering.

They introduced me to Mr. Shi, headmaster of local primary school. We have be exchanging email since last year but haven’t met yet. Mr. Shi told me education administrative in W-city city decide to open 2 large boarding schools in this district, which means all the current middle schools and primary school will be merged into two big ones. “Provincial and central government already give the money to them. It’s just a matter of time.” He said, “Maybe next time you come you won’t see my school.” The rationale behind boarding school might be reasonable: because of the one-child policy, number of incoming new students is declining over the years. Some primary schools even only have less than 100 students. But people live all over the district, some students have to walk 5 km to school everyday. It looks like to build one large school rather than maintain several small ones are more economic and easy to manage. And the earthquake this year gives government a solid backup: rural schools needs better, safer facilities.

But he also mentions that his school is in a better shape than the other 8 schools in this district because he doesn’t owe any money to the bank. Other schools “at least owe 30,000 yuan or more”. The debts grows over the years because they can’t get enough funding from local district to pay teacher salaries.

“We have enough money for daily usage. But we still need more to pay back the banks for all the money (mainly teacher salaries) over the years.” China has changed its tax system over the years. As a part of the reform, the responsibility of finance the education has been decentralized to local level. But as have been studied and reported widely, many rural schools and districts therefore can’t always get enough fund because the tax base is very weak and transfer payment from above is very limited.