How To Retain Rural Teachers?

In today’s society,due to the intensification of the urbanization process,the development of the city is obviously faster than the development of the countryside.The urban school obtains more high-quality resources than the rural school,which leads to the widening gap between the urban school and the rural school.Under the influence of economic interests,working environment,development opportunities and personal concepts,some teachers migrate from rural areas to urban areas or from backward areas to developed areas.This one-way upward flow intensifies the imbalance between urban and rural areas and the imbalance between schools in different areas,leading to the shortage of rural teachers,the decline of education quality and the loss of high-quality students in rural schools,which seriously affects the healthy development of rural education in China.In order to change the unbalanced development between urban and rural schools,the key lies in optimizing rural resources and retaining rural teachers.This study mainly adopts literature analysis,questionnaire survey,interview method and statistical analysis method to study the teacher flow in Z town,W county in Jiangxi province,aiming to provide reasonable suggestions and references for the local government to retain rural teachers.Firstly,this paper sorts out the relevant theories of public service equalization,and then analyzes the current situation and the influencing factors of rural teacher mobility based on the relevant data distribution of rural teachers’ attitudes towards rural public services and interviews.The characteristics of the flow of rural teachers are summarized as follows: the flow is mainly independent,the main part of the flow is young and middle-aged teachers,and the flow has the tendency of profit and one-way.The factors affecting the flow of rural teachers include social security,public medical care,public transportation,public culture and sports,school conditions and individual factors.According to the result of the questionnaire survey and interview,it is concluded that the deep reasons of the teacher mobility are the influence of urban-rural dual structure,the unreasonable public service supply mechanism,the lack of educational investment guarantee mechanism,the dissatisfaction of teachers’ demands.Finally,based on the problems,influencing factors and deep causes of the rural teacher mobility,countermeasures and suggestions for retaining rural teachers are proposed from the perspective of equalization of public services such as establishing a unified public service system between urban and rural areas,strengthening urban and rural public service supply system construction,optimizing rural teacher development support policies,improving the professional quality of rural teachers and cultivate correct values.