Teachers face big qualification tests ( 2003-12-25 09:27) (China Daily by Cui Ning)
Greater effort is needed to upgrade teacher competence among the nation's
teachers - especially those in primary and middle schools -the Ministry of
Education said at a Beijing news conference yesterday.
Latest statistics indicate that the country has more than 9.24 million
primary and middle school teachers, a sufficient number.
While about 80 per cent of them have reached the State-set qualification
standards, the rest 20 per cent are set to receive professional training
programmes within the next five years.
And all teachers across the country will receive specialized training courses
in their spare time over five year spans to help update their skills, officials
said.
Those who still fail to meet the State-set qualification standards after two
or three attempts at training will be dismissed from their positions, the
ministry's Department for Teacher Training said.
The number of primary school teachers in better developed cities is even
over-supplied. That's because the number of pupils has dropped since the 1990s
when the cities implemented family-planning policies earlier than other areas,
Yuan Zhenguo, a department official told China Daily.
Ways of making employment arrangements for redundant teachers vary from city
to city.
In some cities, schools divide students into very small classes in order to
give jobs to these teachers. In other cities, redundant teachers have to step
aside to wait for teaching posts and upgrade their competence by furthering
their studies, according to Yuan.
But he did not name those cities or schools, saying that "it is difficult to
arrange those redundant teachers... and it is up to regional educational
departments to rationalize the arrangement of teaching teams."
Yuan's department has started forecasting studies on the demand and supply of
teachers nationwide from now until 2020, on the basis of population predictions
from the China Population Information Study Centre.
To help update teachers' skills, the ministry started a national
computer-aided training programme this September. The programme will be
continued year-on-year to provide life-long study chances for teachers
throughout China, said Tang Jingwei, the ministry official who is in charge of
training affairs for primary and middle school teachers.
Hu Zhonghua, a teacher with Tianjin Normal University in North China's
Tianjin, said the university has reduced recruitment efforts for students who
are targeted for work at middle schools after graduation. Middle schools in this
city have posed a higher requirement demand for qualified teachers and invite
graduates from other famous normal universities in the recent two years.
Traditional ways of training teachers have lagged behind of schools' need in
today's market economy, Hu said in a telephone interview with China
Daily.
