Defining and coordinating policy continued

As in almost all countries, China embeds elements of teacher policy within its ten-year education sector plan, rather than constructing a dedicated teacher policy. The plan has a chapter on teachers, which focuses on key elements to improve teacher/teaching quality in the continued political and economic transition of the world’s most populous country and second largest economy. These include:

• Promoting professional ethics in relation to teacher appointment, employment, evaluation and misconduct
• Raising professional efficiency through training to strengthen both knowledge and pedagogical proficiency, with a focus on teacher leaders, mentors and principals; all teachers are expected in the future to undergo professional development every five years; the plan calls for bilingual training to strengthen minority areas
• Concentrating policy tools on rural teacher recruitment, deployment and quality, through career and salary incentives
• Raising teachers’ working and living conditions to increase the talent pool and commitment to lifelong careers, through such measures as legislation to guarantee salaries comparable to or higher than other civil servants, performance-based salaries, incentives for remote and border areas, preferential housing and improved social security measures (a policy objective that rarely figures in other plans or policies)
• Strengthening teacher management, especially at local (county) level, through credentialing and a permit system to determine appointment decisions; career progression is to be more subject to service in rural and remote areas.