New registration for teachers

Teachers might face registration every five years, instead of receiving lifelong qualifications, by the end of 2015, according to an official statement of the Ministry of Education (MOE) on Tuesday.

The statement, which was made after a press briefing from the ministry, also said that the country would set up strict teaching qualification mechanisms nationwide to improve education levels by 2015, which would require all teaching applicants to take qualification tests.

The plan, as well as a recent order concerning teacher morality released by the MOE, is widely seen as a move to improve supervision over teachers amid several cases of teachers committing sex offences upon students.

Tao Biaogong, a 62-year-old primary school teacher, was detained by police in July for molesting seven girls, aged from 8 to 9, and infecting them with venereal diseases in Ruichang, Jiangxi Province.

Another case happened in Hainan Province in May, in which a then primary school principal and a then government official took six elementary school girls, aged between 11 and 14, to a hotel and raped them, triggering huge public criticism over the morality of teachers.

The MOE highlighted the morality assessment of teachers in both of the qualification tests and the identity registration and has ordered local governments to pay attention to the assessment.

According to the statement, the plan was trialed in Zhejiang and Hubei provinces in 2011 and then spread to other four provincial-level areas: Hebei, Hainan, Guangxi and Shanghai, and it has proved effective.

Statistics released by the MOE showed that in these six areas, some 77,200 teachers have passed the qualification tests and obtained teaching certificates, with the pass rate being 27.5 percent, while 189,000 teachers in 66 experimental counties successfully registered, with pass rates reaching as high as 99.2 percent.

In the second half of 2013, Shanxi, Anhui, Shandong and Guizhou provinces will see teaching qualification tests, while teachers in four cities of these areas will face identity registration. In 2014, the plan will be implemented in as many as 10 provincial areas.

"For a student like me who has dreamed of being a teacher, there will be no problem passing the teaching qualification examination. But it will take me a lot of time to prepare for the test, which might make me a lot busier before graduation," a senior student at Beijing Normal University, who declined to be named, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"The registration system offers an exit mechanism, which allows teachers to quit their careers. It is definitely progress for the Chinese education system," Chu Zhaohui, research fellow of the National Institute of Education Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday, adding that more measures should be taken to protect the legal rights of retired teachers who wouldn't have registered their teaching identity.