Free Teacher Education Program: A Teacher Distribution Policy in China

• In Event: Roundtable Session 124
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Policies in High-Achieving East-Asian Countries

Abstract

Aimed at attracting excellent high school graduates to join teacher education programs and to reduce the inequality in teacher quality between wealthy urban schools in eastern regions and high-poverty rural schools in western regions, Free Teacher Education (FTE) Policy was established in China in 2007. This national policy waives the tuition fees of more than 10,000 students in six top-ranking national normal universities each year while subsidizing tuition and living expenses for their 4-years of studies in teacher education programs. In return, the policy requires students to work as school teachers in their home provinces for at least 10 years, including two years of service in rural schools in the same provinces. A total of over 34,000 students have been enrolled in the FTE program since 2007.
This study was conducted in the spring of 2011 when the first cohort of FTE students graduated and entering teaching profession. The study was conducted at Beijing Normal University—one of the six normal universities offering a FTE program. Using three types of data: 1) a survey of 470 graduating FTE students, 2) interviews of 8 graduates, 2 school principals and 3 teacher education curriculum designers, and 3) policy documents and administrative meeting minutes regarding FTE program of BNU, this mixed-methods study asked the question, “What are the strengths and weaknesses of the FTE policy?”
The analyses of the survey and interview data showed that the strengths of the FTE policy are: 1) it provides a great opportunity for western rural schools to employ high quality teachers and 2) it gives high-poverty students an opportunity to attend top-ranking universities and expand their future job opportunities. However, the analysis also revealed the weaknesses of the policy: 1) because the FTE programs cannot dismiss students for failing grades and their teaching positions are guaranteed unlike other teacher education students, some students are not motivated to study hard, 2) the consequences for breaking the contact are too harsh: they will not only have to pay back 150% of all the expenses, but also the government will keep the negative record of breaking the contract, which could affect their future employment opportunities in public sectors, 3) even if they return to their home provinces, they are usually hired by city schools, not rural schools, which does not solve the within-province inequality between city and rural schools, and 4) inconsistencies between the national FTE policy and province-level policy on accepting FTE students complicate the hiring process (e.g. some provinces accept FTE students from other provinces while the national policy require them to return to their home provinces).
This is the first systematic empirical study conducted to evaluate the FTE policy in China since its inception in 2007. Because the FTE policy is one of the major teacher distribution policies in the world, the evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses provide valuable information for policymakers not only in China, but also in other countries that suffer from major inequality in student access to qualified teachers across regions.

Authors

• Xudong Zhu, Beijing Normal University

• Ping Zhao, Beijing Normal University