Peasant-teachers grappling with poverty
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-11-17 09:16

His desk is piled up with mails but a brief look at the return addresses is enough to disappoint Li Yingxin -- the letter he's expecting from the Ministry of Education has never come.

Wang Zhengming (L) escorts his pupils on the hillside ally in the remote and unprivileged Weiyuan County of Northwest China's Gansu Province. Wang has taught studens here for three generations and brought out 76 university students in all. [South Weekend]

The grassroots official wrote to the top education authorities four months ago, appealing for better pay for the 600-odd peasant-teachers in his county, 70 percent of whom make only 40 yuan a month (about US$5).

They are called peasant-teachers, or temporary teachers in rural areas, as they are not properly trained to be teachers but are better educated than the average villagers, which allow them to fill up, temporarily, openings undesired by college graduates.

"This is a disadvantaged group living at the bottom rung. They are working all-out but hardly earn their own bread," Li wrote in tears. "In every single village of our county, a peasant-teacher's family is always the poorest."

Many of them should have been promoted to permanent teachers many years ago, but for one reason or another, they have remained marginalized, some until after their retirement age.

Wang Zhengming, 62, is one of them. The veteran peasant-teacher should have got his promotion two decades ago, but good luck always bypassed him. In 1984, the year he was supposed to become a permanent teacher, he was told to go home as the village school he had been teaching for more than 20 years hired new teachers.

"But all the new teachers resigned the very next year. So I was told to go back teaching," Wang told Xinhua in an interview.

He was also he had missed the promotion and has been making 40 yuan a month ever since.

"I've been shocked, time and again, by their poverty and perseverance, and am deeply concerned about the hardship western China is enduring to offer nine-year compulsory education to all school-age children," said Li, a university teacher who is taking a one-year grassroot post in the outback Weiyuan county of Gansu Province.

Education department figures say the 32,000 peasant-teachers in the northwestern province are teaching at least 1 million school-age children, one third of the province's total. But even the highest earner makes only 200 yuan (US$25) a month.

The county coffer could do little to finance education. The annual revenue of Weiyuan county is 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million), enough only to cover one-month salary for its 3,000 permanent teachers and 1,000 public servants. "Even these permanent employees have to be paid, for 11 months of the year, with appropriations from the central coffer," said Li.

But the grassroot official said he's confident something will be done. "So are all the peasant-teachers who know my one-man campaign." A SCHOOL WITH ONLY ONE TEACHER

The primary school Li Xiaofeng has been teaching for the past 13 years is probably the smallest in China -- its 24 students, from first- to fifth-graders, share one classroom and one teacher.

As the only teacher at Shiziyuan village-run primary school, locked in the hinterland of Qinling Mountain Range in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Li Xiaofeng also acts as the principal, workman and caregiver for all the boys and girls.

Altogether 134 students have graduated from in Beijing, four of whom have entered college -- fulfilling a dream of Li's own.

Li, a straight-A senior high school graduate, didn't take the college entrance exam in 1992: he took up teaching in order to repay 10,000 yuan (US$1,230) of debts his father left behind after years of illness.

Hard work has aged him ahead of his years. At 32, Li looks more like a man in his 40s. Despite his fame as an exemplary teacher, his temporary job promises no social security or any compensation other than 103 yuan (US$12.7) a month -- which has already doubled from the 1990s level.

But even that meager wage has been in arrears since the beginning of 2004, because the country has since moved to replace peasant-teachers with new graduates and the local government has cut budget accordingly.

Li admitted he had considered giving up the job. "My fiancee left me in 1997, saying I could never bring home the bread. It's the most face-losing experience for a man."

That summer Li found a job in the provincial capital Xi'an that paid 10 times more. But village officials came to him a few days after the new school year started. "They said they tried to find someone to fill my vacancy but no one was willing to come," Li said.

After a sleepless night, Li made the decision of his life. "The children need me. Without an education, they'll be shepherds all their lives."

Li Xiaofeng is only one of the 500,600 peasant-teachers in western China, a largely underdeveloped region where education is crucial in lifting the locals out of poverty.

BRAIN DRAIN

Yu Jianchao feels restless at the start of every semester. The education official in Weiyuan county, Gansu Province, is worried that some of the 54 underpaid peasant-teachers in the impoverished Beizhai town might quit.

"If they do, I'd have no convincing reason to hold them back -- they are paid only 40 yuan a month, while the 101 permanent teachers earn 30 times as much. But the kids won't be able to attend school if they quit," he said.

Wang Weihong, 39, said he's planning to build his fortune next year by picking cotton in Xinjiang or applying for a better-paid position at a private school. "My colleague Chen Lianru makes 2,400 yuan (nearly US$300) a month at a private school in the city of Jiuquan. He's repaid all his debts and had new houses built at home."

Chen has therefore set an example for the young peasant-workers in Beizhan town, which fidgets Yu. "All that I can do is to cut office spending and buy each of them 25 kilograms of flour at the Chinese New Year, telling them the children need them."

Brain drain among underpaid peasant-teachers has even compelled some village-run schools to hire junior high school dropouts to make do, downgrading the quality of school education.

GOVERNMENTS: LARGER ROLE TO PLAY

China is revising its Compulsory Education Law to promote nine-year compulsory education among all school-age children and offer them equal access to schooling.

Ministry of Education has said in a national report that it will try to ensure compulsory education to all in western China by 2005 and across the country by 2010 and reduce the illiteracy rate among the young and middle-aged population to below 2 percent and that of adults to less than 5 percent.

"The government should exempt all expenses for the nine-year compulsory education period if it really aims to make it accessible to all," said Yang Chengming, a professor of law at the Beijing Institute of Technology, at a meeting on revisions of the compulsory education law.

Educationist Yang Dongping said the central and provincial governments now foot 2 percent and 11 percent respectively of the bills for compulsory education. "The remaining 87 percent are paid by local governments at county level, the most disadvantaged party in terms of financial capacity."

In fact, compulsory education should be funded by the central government alone, said Prof. Yang, an education specialist with Beijing Institute of Technology. "It costs about 30 billion yuan (US$3.7 billion) a year, not a big deal for a country with 2 trillion yuan (US$247 billion) of annual fiscal revenue."

Prof. Wu Hua with Zhejiang University in east China said teachers' salaries, which make up about 80 percent of the total compulsory education spending, should be paid by the central government while the provincial governments may pay the remaining 20 percent.

"This will ensure a stable monthly income for teachers in the underdeveloped regions," he said.