Workers

Education: Apathy and exploitation stifle a key profession

China’s pursuit of rapid economic growth has inspired awe and admiration around the globe. But the insufficient importance attached to one of the most important ingredients for development, namely education, and to those working in the field, means the country risks squandering the advantage it has gained. There is little appreciation, to say the least, of the work of teachers and those in related professions in China. Their salaries and benefits are at such low levels that the best brains are hardly attracted to the profession. A popular adage is said to advise that “as long as there is rice in the house, don’t be a teacher”. [NOTE 1] This is a paradoxical situation in a country whose foremost social philosopher, Confucius, is also celebrated as a teacher. In actual fact, mistreatment and exploitation of teachers are not uncommon in fast modernizing China.

Teachers’ salaries

There are huge discrepancies in the salaries of Chinese school teachers as between major cities and the countryside, where 70 percent of the students and teachers live. For instance, a teacher’s monthly salary in a prestigious middle school in Chengdu is about 2,000 Yuan, [NOTE 2] whereas those in the rural areas were being paid a mere 40 Yuan a month, according to report in late 2005. [NOTE 3]

Although China has been enjoying double digit growth of its gross domestic product for a number of years, the government spends a mere 2.8 percent of the GDP for education and only plans to raise the figure by a little over a percentage point to four percent in the next few years. [NOTE 4] Many teachers’ wages have stayed the same for years or even decades while the cost of living has risen sharply. As a result, teachers demanding higher wages have staged many strikes and protests in different parts of China.

One of the most remarkable actions was a peaceful sit-in before a district government office in Huadu, near Guangzhou in southern China on 1 January, 2007. Nearly 1,000 school teachers demanded a rise in their salaries which had remained unchanged for four years. Thousands of people looked on during the peaceful protest. Coverage of the strike was rapidly deleted from the country’s websites. [NOTE 5] Six months earlier, about 300 out-of-work teachers from around Suizhou municipality in central China’s Hubei province demonstrated in front of the city offices demanding pensions, medical aid and other benefits. [NOTE 6] Another big demonstration had occurred in the southwestern province of Yunnan in May 2006 when some 700 former kindergarten teachers demanded higher pensions. [NOTE 7]

A case starkly illustrating the routine exploitation suffered by a legion of Chinese teachers is that of Hui Zhimin, in northwest China’s Gansu province. “Being a teacher only makes my family poor,” he said. When he started as a teacher 21 years ago, he was paid 40 yuan a month. It took two decades before the sum was raised to 200 yuan, hardly sufficient to feed his family. He was laid off in 2006 as his status was merely that of replacement teacher. The government compensated him at the rate of 300 yuan for each year of service, i.e. a total of 6,300 yuan. He was incensed over the unfair treatment and later became a wage labourer in Lanzhou, earning 30 yuan a day. Moreover, if replacement teachers employed after January 2001 are sacked, they need only be paid 100 yuan for each year of service. [NOTE 8]

Laws ignored

A Teachers Law passed in 1993 guaranteed protection for their interests and aimed to improve their living conditions and social status. It also said teachers whose rights and interests are infringed upon may appeal to higher authorities. [Note 9] The Compulsory Education Law of 2006 said: “The people’s governments at all levels shall ensure the wages and welfare benefits as well as social insurances of the teachers, improve their working and living conditions, (as well as) improve the mechanism for guaranteeing the wages and operating funds of rural teachers.” It also said: “The average wage of teachers shall not be lower than the average wage of the local civil servants.” In fact, the law even provided for subsidies for those working in poor areas: “The teachers engaging in special education shall be entitled to the subsidies of special posts. The teachers who work in ethnic minority areas and in remote and poverty-stricken areas shall be entitled to subsidies of hard and poverty-stricken areas.”

However, the manner in which the protests and other instances of teachers’ expressions of dissatisfaction have been handled around China illustrate that although laws have been passed to protect teachers and provide them with welfare as well as a means of redressing complaints, there is little evidence on the ground of the government showing real effort to safeguard teachers’ livelihood. In general, teachers are left to fend for themselves. In the absence of freedom of association they can at the most stage stray and spontaneous protests, which, nevertheless risk heavy crackdown by the authorities.

Neglect and exploitation

There are two kinds of teachers in China, the certified ones and the uncertified or temporary teachers. Those in the first category are known as “gongban jiaoshi” or public grade teachers and receive proper education and training to equip them for the profession. They receive higher salaries, benefits and pensions compared to the second category known as “minban jiaoshi” or community grade teachers, who are not fully trained to be regular school teachers. [Note 10] They are people engaged in other jobs including farming and allowed to teach at local schools to the grade level equivalent to their own education. They receive low wages and in many cases, no pensions or other benefits. This leads to abuse and exploitation. Since both categories of teachers perform the same task, many local governments tend to prefer hiring the minban teachers, as they can be paid less. There were about 500,000 “temporary teachers” in rural areas, the Shanghai Daily said in late 2005. Some of them teach in junior high schools despite having the same level of education and are paid a pittance. [Note 11]

When they find supplementary sources of income, such as working as vendors in markets, it lowers their standing in society and in the eyes of their students. Some of the rural teachers receive no salary from the local government for a long time. The total amount of unpaid salaries and bonuses of rural teachers in 2004 worked out to 10 billion Yuan. [NOTE 12] Much of the responsibility for financing education is left to the localities where schools are situated, with the provincial and central authorities in general making smaller contributions. This means rich urban districts can call upon impressive resources for education development whereas remote rural areas might well be in a state of crisis.

A former vice-premier, Li Lanqing, whose responsibilities had included education, noted in an interview reported in the official press in 2004 that he was “in tears” and had to “leave the room quickly” when one 50-year-old teacher he met at a run-down shack in a village school in eastern China’s Jiangxi province said he had been working there for 17 years and was being paid 56 yuan because he was a minban teacher. [Note 13] A senior official of the education ministry, Lu Yugang, had in late 2005 spoken of plans to spend 40 billion Yuan to cover the salaries of teachers in rural areas as well as to stop the “temporary teacher practice” under which farmers with little education and training teach in return for paltry payments. [Note 14] But there are no reports as to whether the plan has been put into practice and has led to any improvement

Given the neglect of the countryside in vast tracts of China, abuse and exploitation of the kind witnessed by Li Lanqing can only increase and become more serious. China has the laws to crackdown on such exploitation but it remains to be seen whether and when the authorities at the central and provincial levels wake up to the need for urgent action in a field that is crucial for ensuring modernization and continued prosperity. Moreover, structural labour shortages occur in a period of rapid economic growth. There are opportunities -- real or perceived -- for making a quick buck in many well-off cities in the east and south of the country that entice people in low-paid professions howsoever valuable their current jobs might be.

Teacher shortages persist

According to a study published in 2007, China had 9.1 million full-time teachers in its nine-year compulsory education system in 2004, when, despite impressive investments in training during the reform era, there were still more than 313,000 teachers who lacked required credentials. [Note 15] Teacher shortages persist in some areas. Even as the 21st century is being branded as the Chinese century, its teaching force is characterized by “great unevenness” as well as serious problems with qualifications and quality in some areas. [Note 16] Thanks to the effects of the one-child policy, enrollment in elementary schools has declined from nearly 135.5 million in 1999 to nearly 112.5 million in 2004. But at the same time, the number of junior secondary school students has risen from a little over 58.1 million to nearly 65.3 million and senior secondary from 10.5 million to 22.2 million (i.e. a 111.5 percent rise at the senior secondary level.) [Note 17] These figures hide uneven spreads: In China’s western regions, where the one-child policy was less strictly imposed, student populations, and hence the need for teachers, will continue to rise.

At the same time, the supply of teachers is not keeping pace. Senior experienced teachers are being lost as they reach retirement age. In 2004, nearly half of all elementary teachers were below 35 years of age. [Note 18] As economic reforms have widened the urban-rural gap, not only does the financing of rural education become more difficult, many experienced and qualified teachers migrate to cities or quit teaching for good. This has forced some areas to take on substitute teachers, whose numbers have been rising despite government efforts at discouraging the practice. Half the substitute teachers are to be found in China’s western regions. A study (reported in the China Education Daily in 2005) noted that at the end of 2004, there were 600,000 substitute teachers in primary education alone. [Note 19] This is a much higher figure than the one for “temporary teachers” cited by Shanghai Daily noted above. (It would appear that the two labels describe the same practice.)
 
It remains to be seen whether the Chinese authorities pay earnest attention to education and the fostering of generations of teachers that would be needed in the decades to come and whether terms such as “scientific development” and “harmonious society”, which have been bandied about in the run up to the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China, will acquire real meaning. In many developing countries, including India, hundreds of millions of people are still illiterate and education is less a right than a privilege. China’s current path would take it in that direction, to a further and dramatic erosion of commitment to universal education for children. Rather it is a fertile route for the proliferation of child labour and other social ills. China has to choose whether it wants to go on that route or regain the high ground it has long claimed to occupy, by affirming commitment to universal education through practical action, including attention to the plight of teachers.

IHLO
November 2007

NOTES