22 1 Introduction to the Development of Basic Education in China
- Teachers motivation was a substantial problem in 1990, especially in rural and
remote areas where living conditions were very basic and teachers lives diffi-
cult. Attempts were being made to increase the proportion of locally born teach-
ers in Zhaojue since many of the Han teachers prefer not to work in minority
areas. Teachers difficulties included feelings of low status in society; low
incomes; limited fringe benefits in terms of the quality of housing and medical
care; difficulties in obtaining city and town registration for spouses and chil-
dren; lack of safety in some areas. Minban teachers are particularly deprived
since they have lower incomes than government teachers, often seem not to
receive the full amounts of grain and locally provided income to which they are
entitled, and have virtually no fringe benefits. - Allocations for books and equipment tended to be very low and of the order
of 1 to 2 per cent of total expenditure. The consequence of this was that most
rural schools visited had very little in the way of learning resources apart from
textbooks which were usually purchased by parents. No library books were to
be found in the majority of rural schools. Subsidies were given to schools to
purchase textbooks in Zhaojue. - In Zhaojue enrolment rates for girls were between 10 and 15 % of the total at
primary level. In Ansai the situation was better and improving, and in Tongxian
the enrolments of girls were similar to those of boys. All girl classes existed in
Zhaojue and were thought to be effective. Hostels were also being built for girls
to encourage enrolment and retention. - Pre-school classes were becoming widespread in the case study districts in
1990. They varied from those which appeared well run with structured learn-
ing tasks and qualified teachers with appropriate educational materials, to those
which were poorly organised with unqualified staff operating for profit. - Not many areas had inspection and monitoring systems established. Where they
did exist most attention seemed to be focused on administrative inspection, with
little attention given to quality issues. There was no considered analysis of out-
comes that would give deeper insight into the status of teaching and learning.
Actions subsequent to inspections rarely seemed to involve improvements to
curricula, teaching methods, and learning materials. In both Zhaojue and Ansai
the use of examination data to improve school performance seemed to be at
a very early stage. Beyond collecting information from tests there seemed to
be little attempt to design interventions to assist school with low performance.
More attention seemed to be focused on further improvement of the scores in
the best schools than on closing the gap between the best and the worse. - The need to standardise definitions of key indicators used to measure progress
and to provide administrative targets, and the need collect more reliable data on
enrolment, progression, completion and drop out.
The scene is now set to present data from each of the three case study sites and
raise issues of current status and comparisons with the past which we develop with
each narrative. This will be followed by more extensive discussion of four the-
matic issues arising from the case studies. These are the evolution of rural teachers