Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

To comprehensively and systematically assess problems and effectiveness of policies aimed at attracting teachers to rural areas in China in depth and clarify the direction of reforms, we analyze policies by using methods such as questionnaires, interviews, systematic analysis, text analysis, and shadow controls. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party (2012), China has gradually developed special policies to attract teachers to rural areas, including policies to increase the number and improve the quality and compensation packages of rural teachers. The key factors that pose challenges to the expansion of the teaching force in rural areas of China include poor remuneration and unreasonable deployment of rural teachers and ineffective enforcement of the teacher exchange policy. Policies were introduced to increase the compensation packages to attract qualified teachers to rural schools, which establish an effective system to ensure adequate supply of resources to facilitate professional developments of rural teachers, and implement the teacher exchange and rotation system to attract more teachers to rural areas. China’s policy-makers will make further efforts to increase remuneration of rural teachers and improve the rural teacher deployment mechanism and the teacher exchange mechanism between urban and rural areas.