Teachers tout pay woes (2)

According to posts on the blog of a self-claimed student from CFLS, the strike resulted from long-standing conflicts between teachers and the school authorities that started after the two State-owned schools were privatized in the early 2000s.

The teachers' salaries, social and medical insurance and housing funds are very low compared with those in State-owned schools, despite the fact that the students are charged about 20,000 yuan per academic year, according to a statement released by the teachers on Sichuan Daily website Friday.

"We urged better welfare guarantees for the teaching staff, especially for those temporarily employed teachers, who make up a large share of the faculty here," an unnamed teacher said over the weekend.
Experts said the strike in Chengdu reflects problems in the country's half-government, half-private school system, a structure that has been abandoned in many cities.

Geng Shen, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, said the reform in school-running systems that allows individuals and enterprises to hold shares of government-owned schools was carried out nationwide in 2000.

Geng noted that the Law of Promoting Civilian-run Education, enacted in 2002, prescribed that any schools, including non-government funded ones, shouldn't be profit-oriented, all tuition collected should first fit educational needs, which above all is to pay reasonable wages to teachers so they can be liberated from the pressures of school operations and concentrate on educating students.

"Given today's situation in China, the schools that used to turn private because of a lack of government funding should be changed back," he said. "We should not run a school with the kids' tuition money."

Geng also said that the local educational department is responsible if the rights of teachers were truly violated, and the government should request that the school compensate the teachers accordingly.

Students showed their support for teachers by gathering in a downtown square and handing out leaflets to solicit support.

Teachers expressed apology Friday in the statement to the students and their families and vowed not to leave the school for good.

The teaching staff is said to have called for dialogue with school administrators over work contracts and payment packages three times before the strike, but there was no "tangible" response from school authorities, the statement said.

The two schools boast high-quality teaching staffs and high entrance rates to prestigious universities. CEFLS, for example, claims on its website that six out of the city's 10 top students at the national college entrance exam came from the school.

Qiu Wei, Zhang Han, Cong Mu and Liang Chen contributed to this story

Source: Global Times
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