Teacher's suicide reveals rural education woes (3)

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IRREPLACEABLE ROLE

Despite their lack of professional training and repeated calls to fire them, temporary teachers are still playing an irreplaceable role in keeping rural schools running in China's remote countryside.

Ma Guoqiang is the only teacher at Xin'an Primary School in Yunnan's Jinping County. The school has only 36 students, all first and second-graders.

A temporary teacher, Ma, too, was fired in March 2012. "But the villagers persuaded me to stay, and the village government pays me 400 yuan a month."

Ma said he had to stay. "Otherwise, the school would no longer exist and the children would need to hike 14 km to a larger school. They are too young to walk that far."

Xin'an is one of the eight primary schools in Jinping County sustained by just one temporary teacher, said Luo Fangde, the county's education chief.

"Theoretically, these small schools, with less than 300 students in total, should have been incorporated into bigger schools in neighboring villages."

In these cases, temporary teachers are often the only group of people to provide schooling on the children's doorstep. Without a school nearby, many children may quit school, said Luo.

In Tongmian village of Ningming County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, one third of the primary school teachers are temporary. Their educational background varies from primary school to senior high.

"No college graduate is willing to work in this out-of-the-way village," said Zheng Yuchen, principal of Tongmian Village School. "So we have to hire temporary teachers at our own expenses."

The school has more than 2,000 students and 108 teachers -- one third of whom are temporary.

In China, salaries for public school teachers are covered by local treasuries. In underdeveloped areas, however, many rural schools have to recruit temporary teachers at their own expenses.

In Yunnan, temporary rural teachers earn an average of 500 yuan a month, about 20 percent of qualified colleagues' salaries, according to the municipal education department at Zhaotong.

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