Young people “can’t keep them”, hard-core people “I want to leave”, why is the “teacher shortage” getting worse?

The "teacher shortage" in public schools is just beginning now and will become more and more serious in the future. Why are you so worried? Listen to me coming slowly:

First, after the reform of the public institution system, the status of teachers as cadres has changed. Now they are ordinary employees of public institutions. There is no essential difference between employees of various enterprises.

Second, it turns out that after teachers retire, it is still a financial expense. The pension is only 10% less than the in-service salary. Now it is all spent by the Social Security Bureau. The amount of pension gradually changes with the amount of enterprise retirees. If the money is the same, there will be no advantage, and there will be a basic living guarantee. The salary while working is low, and the salary after retirement can only maintain the basic life. Who would want to waste their prime youth in school coaxing children. Why not take advantage of your youth and energy to earn more money for retirement!

Third, in today's economic and social situation, as a teacher, your salary is low. You have no money to honor your parents, you can't make your wife happy, and you can't raise your children. If you are not respected by society, have no status at home, and did not make more money when you were young, what will you do if you are seventy or eighty years old? How can you let today's young people teach with peace of mind by saying that they are happy in poverty?

Fourth, since you will receive the same pension as corporate employees when you are old, if you want to be a teacher, you must go to a private school. Private education has higher wages, better benefits, and higher social security than public schools than public schools, but it is stressful. We are still young and have few social affairs, so why bother with the halo of a public school establishment, which neither provides food nor money? ?

"Teacher shortage" often occurs in underdeveloped areas, especially rural primary schools in these areas.

I am the principal of a village-level school in Jiangxi. Rural primary schools can be said to be "iron-armed camps and running soldiers." In the few years I have been in charge of this school, the teachers have changed one after another. New teachers are constantly being assigned, and teachers are constantly leaving, either being transferred, resigning, or taking leave... Except for me, no teacher has stayed here for more than two years.

In addition to the relatively large teacher turnover, our school also has a large teacher shortage. Our school has six grades (including kindergarten, and the sixth grade is concentrated in the central school). The approved teacher establishment There are 8 people and 8 teachers in six classes. Each teacher has a heavy workload. Due to the "teacher shortage", our school usually only has three or four teachers on staff, and the others have to hire temporary substitutes. Substitute teachers have low wages, varying quality, and no teaching experience, which brings certain difficulties to teaching management.

This situation does not occur in my village primary school. The situation in each of the eight village primary schools in our town is similar. The only one with relatively well-organized teachers here is the Central Primary School. The leaders of the Central School give priority to ensuring that the Central Primary School is fully staffed. The "teacher shortage" in village-level primary schools has become a bottleneck restricting the development of rural education.

The “inability to get out” and “retain” of rural primary school teachers is the reason for the “teacher shortage”.

I remember that the year before last, our school was assigned three orientation normal students at once for the first time. This made me very happy. I thought that I finally no longer had the headache of hiring substitute teachers everywhere. Unexpectedly, as soon as the allocation list came out, I received a notice the next day. Due to the difficult conditions, the two teachers to be allocated decided to give up and would rather pay liquidated damages (the orientation teacher training period is five years, and those who resign before five years must pay liquidated damages). Nor do they work in the ravines.

After persisting for one semester, the only remaining orientation student decided to find a relationship and be transferred out of our school. Only me and a group of substitute teachers were left in our school. The rest is Newly assigned teachers come and go like a stream.

Rural conditions are difficult. Although the country has made great efforts to standardize rural campuses in recent years, and school conditions have been greatly improved, there is still a big gap between them and towns and urban areas. The quality of life The problem cannot be solved well, new teachers cannot be hired or retained, and the "teacher shortage" in rural schools has become the norm in many places!

Conclusion: What do rural schools use to attract and retain talents? The school itself may not be able to do it alone. It must rely on policy support, provide more support to teachers in remote rural areas, provide more policy tilt, and further optimize school running conditions, in order to fundamentally solve the "teacher shortage" in rural areas.

I am the key teacher who left. I want to talk about my feelings and reasons for leaving the teaching team.

The objective reasons for choosing to leave are:

1. The teacher’s salary is really too low. Back then, I had a senior professional title in an elementary school and was a middle-level cadre in the school. I had to work endless classes, fill out endless forms, and do endless activities every day, and my salary was only over 2,000 yuan. There is a complete mismatch between effort and reward. People in other industries cannot understand that kind of sadness and exhaustion.

2. The teacher’s work is really tiring. Routine tasks such as preparing lessons, correcting homework, home visits, and attending classes are not a big deal. It is the constant need to fill in various forms and catch up on various materials for inspections that is a big headache. The teachers all have interesting names, called "cousin" and "cousin sister-in-law". There are too many statistical tables, especially the various tasks in the teaching office. There are even more. I don't know how I survived in those days. Came here.

3. There are too many teacher leaders. Anyone can be a teacher leader. When a leader comes to inspect the city, teachers must do a good job in welcoming the inspection and prepare for general cleaning. To strive for various city honors, teachers must go to the streets to publicize and even pick up trash on the streets. Trash and sweep the floor.

It’s not that I don’t like education, it’s just that the reality is too sad. Teachers have too little autonomy. Many times they are involuntary and do not allow you to make different decisions.

Of course, there are also my personal subjective reasons. I want to move to another city after getting married, so I quit my job. People who have experienced teaching positions can quickly get started in any position, and the unique sense of responsibility of teachers will also make teachers widely praised in new positions.

I hope that the country will fundamentally improve the treatment of grassroots teachers, loosen the shackles of teachers, remove the administrative pressure, return the original responsibilities of teachers to teachers, and say goodbye to "cousin" and "cousin sister-in-law" ” label and bid farewell to street cleaning. In this way, more talents can be retained.

Ren Zhengfei said that China’s hope lies in grassroots education. The hope of education is inspired by teachers, so please pay more attention to the problems of teachers.

There is an old saying: As people go to higher places, water flows to lower places. For the teaching profession, there is no exception. Any environment that is conducive to human development will often revolve around the environment. A good workplace is not only about salary and benefits, but also about the humanistic environment. If both can meet people's needs, it will definitely make it impossible to form a trend of "can't stay" and "I want to leave".

What makes young teachers excited is not only the school management mechanism itself, but also the gradual decline in society’s impression and evaluation of the teaching profession, which has hurt the self-esteem of some people to a great extent. In particular, the principal's philosophy of running the school, as well as parents' attitudes towards teachers, can easily cause young teachers to change their original intentions after their original ideals run into a wall with reality. Leaving the profession may be a last resort choice after their hopes are shattered.

For key teachers, there is often a place to go. I once knew several key teachers, and most of them went to first- and second-tier cities for development, where there are many private schools with high salaries to attract talents. The departure of these key teachers also inspired the colleagues around them to take action, leaving only those who really had no choice but to stick around.

In this journey, some are changing careers, and some are going to better schools. However, as for the teacher shortage, it is not a universal phenomenon. The more developed areas are, the less they lack teachers, and the more economically backward areas, there is a teacher shortage. It seems that Shuanxin's ability to retain people ultimately depends on salary, because teachers are also ordinary people and need to support their families.

I joined the teaching profession in 2016. At that time, I was really passionate. I went to class during the day, corrected homework, and went back to do teaching exercises at night. I lay in bed thinking about how to educate those who are disobedient and don’t like to learn. child. Later, we became busier and busier, with three classes of English and compulsory education balanced to meet the national inspection. We had endless things to do, endless materials, and we often worked overtime at night. After the inspection later, I thought I could relax a little, and we ushered in the Teacher Poverty Alleviation Program in 2017. It really meant going to the countryside to carry out various publicity and education, making materials, settling accounts, and revised it countless times. I remember that we were all on Teachers’ Day that year. Working overtime to create various materials for poverty alleviation. In the second half of 2017, one of my colleagues and I became pregnant, and we still had to go to the countryside to work under the scorching sun with our big bellies. In March 2018, I was discharged from the hospital three days after giving birth. When I got home, I received a call from the school asking me to go to the countryside to help the poor and prepare materials. Haha, I was really speechless when they said I was responsible for anything that went wrong. We now have four classes in the morning, classes at noon, and four classes in the afternoon. Now we are discussing the paid make-up classes introduced by the state... I don’t want to teach, I really don’t! Last year's target assessment has not been completed yet... I don't want to be engaged in education anymore, all kinds of assessments, all kinds of inspections, hey...

The young "can't keep", the backbone "I want to" This kind of "teacher shortage" only exists in economically backward rural areas and poor areas. However, some urban teachers with relatively high salaries and relatively superior living and working conditions do not have a "teacher shortage" problem. On the contrary, the recruitment competition for teachers in many urban schools is also extremely fierce.

Therefore, this problem is not a common problem in the education sector, but the reasons why young teachers "cannot be retained" and key teachers "I want to leave" can be reflected from the following aspects:

The number one issue is salary. Low entry salary is the fundamental reason why young teachers cannot be attracted or even retained.

At present, the starting salary of teachers in many economically underdeveloped poverty-stricken areas or in rural areas is only about 2,500 yuan, and this 2,500 yuan is a salary that can only be received after receiving a junior professional title. Rural teachers often have to go through a period of one or two years with a position but no establishment, and their salary is around 1,500 yuan.

This entry-level salary package is unacceptable to the vast majority of young people. With the improvement of people’s living standards and consumption levels, even those without academic qualifications will have a starting salary of around 3,000 when working outside, let alone those with high standards. What about young teachers? They are never willing to go back to the countryside to earn such low wages.

Ranked second is the difficult living conditions and poor working environment of rural teachers, which is one of the important reasons for the "teacher shortage". 1. Teaching in rural areas is far away from home. It takes a long time to travel back and forth every day, which consumes energy.

Nowadays, most rural non-boarding schools do not provide dormitories for teachers. Teachers can only drive dozens of miles and go back and forth twice a day to teach in school. In addition, the school starts early. After getting off work late, many people can't stand the pain of getting up early and staying late.

2. Most rural students are left-behind children, who are difficult to manage and teach, and it is difficult for parents to communicate with them. Ranked third is that career promotion is difficult and teachers do not see good career prospects.

Although the country has been calling for senior professional titles to be given to rural teachers in recent years, teachers in many places still have no hope of promotion due to very few professional title quotas.

Take the place where Teacher Xiao Xu is located as an example. In the past ten years, there have been no quotas for intermediate or senior professional titles in middle schools. More than 200 teachers with more than 20 years of teaching experience in the entire township have not even been awarded intermediate professional titles, let alone Don't expect senior professional titles. This means that even if these teachers retire, the best result may only be awarded an intermediate professional title. And if township teachers do not recruit a large number of young teachers, or do not increase the number of intermediate and senior professional titles in large numbers, This will mean that some teachers will not even be awarded intermediate professional titles when they retire, let alone senior professional titles.

Such career prospects have caused some key teachers to lose confidence in sticking to the countryside and choose to leave for jobs with higher wages and brighter career prospects.

Ranked fourth is that education is becoming more and more market-oriented, and some private schools are blooming everywhere. Coupled with the flourishing development of after-school tutoring classes, some young teachers and key teachers have greater opportunities. employment space.

Many young teachers are preparing to take the urban teacher establishment examination while working as teachers in private middle schools or off-campus tutoring classes without any delay in making money.

Some enterprising teachers have also left rural public schools with no career development to work in private schools, or simply started extracurricular tutoring classes, and their income greatly exceeds the dead wages in township schools.

In addition, a series of reasons such as the low status of teachers and too many non-teaching tasks assigned to teachers by schools are also the reasons for the formation of "teacher shortage" in economically underdeveloped areas.

In short, as the recruitment of teachers with relatively low salaries in Guangxi, Anhui and other places has been stagnant, people have also begun to worry about the aging of teachers in most rural schools or schools with lower salary levels.

So how to solve this "teacher shortage" problem?

In fact, everyone knows that increasing the salary and benefits of township teachers and expanding the career prospects of township teachers will definitely attract more outstanding teachers to take root in rural areas and develop rural education.

For example, among Ningxia teachers teaching in rural areas, there is no such thing as the phenomenon of young teachers “cannot retain” and key teachers “I want to leave”. On the contrary, some teachers in the city are eager to come to teach in rural areas. The reason is , Ningxia has implemented good policies that are truly beneficial to rural teachers:

On the one hand, it increases the subsidy for rural teachers to 900 yuan per capita, with a maximum subsidy of 1,800 yuan. On the other hand, it provides incentives to teachers who have taught in rural areas for 15 to 25 years , providing treatment without any restrictions and directly evaluated for intermediate and senior professional titles.

Therefore, the root cause of the "teacher shortage" of rural teachers lies in their remuneration. Only by increasing the salary and remuneration of rural teachers and expanding their career prospects can we retain and attract excellent teachers to teach.

Motivation, due to its famous teaching elite, has been poached by private schools. Now public schools are basically free, but a considerable number of people find ways to go to private schools. Their purpose is to let future generations receive good teaching resources, so , the shortage of excellent teachers and teachers will become more and more intense.

Compared with the huge crowds of teachers’ qualification certificate examinations in the previous two days, the term “teacher shortage” is difficult for many people to understand. There are so many people outside who are desperately trying to enter this industry but are unable to do so. Why is there still a "teacher shortage"?

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the compilation problem.

Many places have a limited amount of staff. Although the school is short of teachers, since they cannot be admitted, they cannot recruit people, so they have to use temporary teachers or substitute teachers to fill the class.

We have a primary school here with more than 30 substitute teachers. Some classes change teachers several times a year, which greatly affects children's learning. However, there are no quotas for current teachers every year. , parents and principals are all having a headache.

Another very important reason is that many young teachers resign and leave, especially in rural primary and secondary schools.

I know a friend who was admitted as a teacher in a certain county last year and was assigned to a remote rural primary school. He even congratulated him at that time because the exam was really hard.

But this year he resigned and worked as a teacher in a tutoring institution in the provincial capital city.

Speaking of the reasons, he said: First, the salary is too low, less than 3,000 when he joined the job; second, he is too far away from home, and he and his wife live in two places, living a weekend life as a couple; third, I was very busy at work, focusing on self-study and classes from morning to night, and there was no room for improvement. I felt desperate and felt that I should go out and try my best at such a young age.

This should be a common reason why young people "can't keep".

The "I want to leave" key teachers made the structure of the teaching team unbalanced.

In recent years, big cities, prestigious schools or private schools have greatly improved the salary of teachers, especially for outstanding teachers, teaching experts, key teachers, subject leaders, provincial and municipal famous teachers, special teachers, senior teachers, Excellent teachers such as winners of national, provincial and municipal high-quality courses extended an olive branch, and the remuneration and working conditions provided were extremely attractive. As the saying goes, giving money, giving support, and solving the worries of spouses and children have made many prestigious people live a miserable life. Key teachers have lost their minds and left, causing the original school to lose support and leaders, causing an imbalance in the teacher structure and a decline in teaching quality.

Shenzhen made frequent big moves in the recruitment of primary and secondary school teachers last year and this year, and the money spent was huge. Doctors and masters from Peking University, Tsinghua University and famous foreign universities have invested in its embrace. There should be no "teacher shortage" there.

We have a newly built school here. We were recruiting outstanding talents last year. A special mathematics teacher came to apply. The school’s answer was that it would not provide accommodation, work and study for spouses and children, so they turned around and went to the coast. City.

Summary of Xiaoxing: Retain people by policy, retain people by treatment, retain people by feelings... No matter which way you use it, you have to make teachers feel the happiness of work and the hope of life. Who wants to run around everywhere? , who wants to start all over again? Just because I felt disappointed after entering this door, I wanted to leave. Although there are a lot of people outside who want to come in, it is easy to get in but difficult to stay. When a young man breaks out of the siege through five hurdles and six generals, he carries dreams and hopes. If he cannot let his heart have a place, It's only a matter of time before you settle down and leave. To solve the “teacher shortage”, we must work hard on policies, remuneration and working environment!

Is there a “teacher shortage”? Young teachers are waiting and watching, and key teachers have ideas. Normal normal!

Last year, four young teachers in our town did resign. As far as I know, two of them were admitted to the civil service, one was admitted to the Huaibei City Education System, and the other was admitted to a senior high school in the county.

Our school is a rural school, and neither the working environment, working conditions, nor teachers’ salaries can be compared with those in urban schools. It should be understandable that young teachers pursue perfection and development prospects. Basically, they decide to resign after finding a good place to go. There is nothing abnormal.

Such things have happened before. At that time, two private junior high schools in our county had just begun to be established, and teachers were recruited everywhere with great fanfare. As a result, some rural or urban teachers were more courageous and applied for jobs one after another. Teachers who have worked in private schools revealed that no less than 40 teachers are teachers in public primary and secondary schools. This is considered to be on-the-job but not on duty, and national policy does not allow it. This should also be a form of resignation, more accurately called resignation. Most of them are young teachers or key teachers. Under the management model of private schools, they have rapidly improved students' academic performance, increased the influence of private schools, and increased the enrollment rate of private schools. It is they who have led private schools and influenced public schools.

What they did was obviously in violation of national policies and regulations. However, due to the protection of some people, they were saved.

Why are they willing to take the risk to teach in private schools? Obviously this is because private schools offer high salaries and are attractive.

However, now they are basically back to their original workplaces, because these two schools have been converted into public schools when they opened last fall.

If you really think about it, it is impossible for any unit to have people resign. Even civil servants have resigned to go into business. Therefore, it should be said that it is normal for individual teachers to resign! Most teachers still stick to their jobs, working conscientiously and day and night. There is no so-called "teacher shortage" at all.

However, it cannot be denied that due to various reasons, there are still young teachers and key teachers who want to resign, and they are still trying their best to find a good place.

These are normal situations, nothing to be alarmed about!

I think that as policies get better and better, the teaching profession will become more and more popular, and the phenomenon of everyone envying teachers and vying to teach will soon appear.

My old principal often told me: "You will definitely surpass me in the future. Because the country's development can only get better and better!" One after another important national documents were announced: "Accelerating the The Implementation Plan for Promoting Education Modernization (2018-2022), "China Education Modernization 2035", "Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of Teacher Team Construction in the New Era", etc., show us the country's determination and will: to develop education and revitalize China.

Various signs indicate that not only will "teacher shortage" not occur, but "teacher shortage" will appear!