Teacher Award System in China

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

Abstract

Since the establishment of People’ Republic of China in 1949, many school teachers have been influenced by a series of political turmoil and suffered from instability of their positions. During the Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong from 1966 to 1976, teachers were severely criticized and teacher education programs closed down for five years (1966 to 1971). Even after the teacher education programs reopened in 1971, only a limited number of candidates were trained due to the lack of resources. As a result, 65.8% of elementary school teachers and 48% of middle school teachers were un-trained and un-certified, according to the statistics in 1977.
After the death of Mao Zedong and the open policy, education and teachers were regarded as the important vehicles to build strong foundation of China. To improve teacher quality and encourage qualified teachers to stay longer in teaching profession, the Chinese government has made many efforts to raise teacher salaries and their social status during the past thirty years since early 1980s. The Government has also established a teacher award system to recognize and financially reward excellent teachers as the major approach to raise the social status of teaching profession. Despite the importance of this teacher award system in China, few empirical studies have evaluated its implementation and influences on teachers. This study examined the nature of current policies and implementation of the teacher award system and analyzed the influence of the award system based on government reports and statistics and interviews of 30 teachers.
The study found that there are four national teacher awards for K-12 teachers as shown in Table 1. The analysis of the government reports and statistics revealed the major influence of these awards on teaching professions. In late 1970s, teachers were suffering from low social status and low salary. Most graduate of top-ranking normal universities (national universities that train teacher candidates) tended to avoid teaching profession for more financially attractive positions in government, law, and private sectors. Due to these national awards made available to teachers and improvement of social status and salary, statistics showed that the number of normal university graduates who chose teaching professions increased by mid 1990s. It is also reported that these teachers who received awards are making an important contribution by demonstrating excellent teaching practice and improving student achievement. However, the analysis also revealed the phenomenon of excellent teachers who received these awards leaving high-poverty rural schools for wealthy urban schools. This creates a further inequality in teacher quality between rural and urban schools in China. These findings point to the importance of retaining excellent teachers who received awards in the schools where they are most needed.

Author

• Zhikui Niu, Beijing Normal University