China has seen a surplus of graduates majoring in teaching in recent years as at most 60 percent of the about 650,000 teaching graduates can not find jobs at primary or secondary schools every year, an official from the Ministry of Education (MOE) said at a conference.
At a conference attended by presidents from China's top teaching universities in Shanghai on October 12, Xu Tao, director of MOE's Department of Teacher Education, revealed that a total of 617,800 students were trained to be teachers in 2014 but the government only offers 250,000 new positions a year, news portal thepaper.cn reported Wednesday.
However, he added that among the some 3 million teachers who are working in poor villages in central and western Chinese regions, many are not well educated. He stated that it is hard for rural schools to keep teachers, and those who specialize in arts are in dire need.
The gap between supply of and demand for teaching graduates in China has focused experts' attention on the necessity of a reduction in the quantity of these graduates and an improvement of their qualities, while many called for financial support for rural schools and more effective training.
Too many teachers
Chen Qun, president of Shanghai's East China Normal University, also said that Chinese schools recruited 262,946 graduates in 2012, of which 196,629 were from teaching training colleges. However, a total of 656,560 teaching graduates left schools the same year, meaning that only around 30 percent of them found a job at a school.
"Previously, the government was responsible for allocating graduates to different schools. Therefore, large number of students chose to study at teaching colleages got a permanent job after graduation. However, after this policy was ended, many graduates failed to enter schools due to the limits on the number of posts," said Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow at China National Institute for Educational Research.
Chu added that as schools are recruiting graduates from other majors, many graduates from teaching schools face fierce competition.
According to the report, a survey showed that many top middle schools want to recruit graduates from leading comprehensive universities and more schools are recruiting graduates with master's, or even doctor's degrees.
"Our primary school started to only recruit graduates with master's degrees last year. Although graduates from teaching universities showed more advantages in teaching methodology in the first year, the gap will soon be closed and we are more competitive in terms of professional knowledge," a teacher surnamed Zhao who began working in a Beijing primary school in 2014 told the Global Times.
Chu suggested authorities focus more on promoting the quality of students in teaching universities while controlling their quantity.
Shortage of rural staff
Compared to the oversupply of teaching colleage graduates, schools in rural villages are in great need of teachers.
"I taught Chinese, mathematics, art and PE courses for students in grade one as we have no dedicated music, art and PE teachers. Two graduates from a university in our city came to our school this summer but quickly left due to the school's poor facilities," a primary teacher surnamed Hao, who has been teaching at a Shanxi-based village school for over 20 years, told the Global Times.
Xu pointed that of the 9.1 million teachers who are working in county and village schools, 3.3 million of them are teaching at poor areas. Some of them only have a diploma from high school. They can neither teach students well nor are willing to stay there for a long time due to the low salary on offer.
"We go through fierce competition to find a job. But many still refuse to go to rural schools," a graduate surnamed Zhang from the Central China Normal University told the Global Times.
Xu said that since 2015, the MOE will invest 2.15 billion yuan($330 million) each year to provide training to rural teachers and it plans to enhance 10 million elementary teachers' ability to use information technologies by 2017. Moreover, China will provide 10.3 billion yuan to raise village teachers' salaries.
