Improving Energetically the Quality of Teachers through Implementation of "Gardeners' Promotion Project Across the Centuries"

8. Great efforts should be taken to improve the overall quality of teachers with particular stress laid on developing teachers' professional ethics. Within the next three years efforts will be made to provide diversified in-service and continuing education programs for the entire body of school principals and full-time school teachers, and an endeavor will be made to consolidate and perfect the system of job-related training for school principals and the system of prior certification for them. We should strengthen the development of teaching materials for the continuing education of school teachers. Training in computer literacy fundamentals should be provided for all full-time school teachers and student teachers enrolled in teacher training programs. In areas with the necessary conditions full-time teachers in primary schools should have at least two-year post-secondary education , and those of lower secondary schools should at least have completed first-degree level undergraduate education around 2010£® In economically developed areas , recipients of master's degrees should constitute a certain proportion of the full-time teachers and principals of upper secondary schools. Efforts should be made to strengthen and reform teacher education in order to improve the initial training of prospective teachers. It is incumbent on all the stronger HEIs to make their contribution to the initial and in-service training of school teachers.

9. Great importance should be attached to development of a contingent of backbone teachers. In the period l999-2000 , 100 , 000 backbone teachers from primary, general secondary and vocational schools are to be selected for training, and l0,000 among them will be given special training organized by the Ministry of Education. These backbone teachers will play a leading role in local pedagogical reforms through school-based experiments, lecturing tours, seminars, training workshops, and exchanges with teachers and trainees from other schools. These activities will effectively disseminate the knowledge and skills of the backbone teachers.

10. With respect to the employment of school teachers, a system of employment based a contract will be adopted to cover the entire school faculty. Periodic assessment of teachers' performance will be conducted, and vacancies in teaching positions will be filled through competitive applications so as to enhance the qualities of the faculty. Around the year 2000, schools will be run with higher efficiency with staff quality being improved through raising the pupil-teacher £¨as well as pupil-staff£© ratios and dismissing unqualified and diverting the redundant members to other jobs. The channel of recruiting new teachers should be broadened to include graduates from non-teacher-training tertiary institutions who are qualified to be teachers, so as to improve the structural composition of the contingent of teachers.
The problem of the shortage of teachers in schools located in remote and poverty-stricken areas must be attentively tackled£® The system that graduates from teacher training schools should render their services in those areas for a designated period is to be further improved£® Graduates from HEIs £¨including non-teacher- training ones £© are encouraged to teach in remote and poor rural areas on a rotational basis and they shall enjoy preferential treatment in remuneration as stipulated by the government£® Civil servants working in governmental agencies at all levels are encouraged to teach in schools.