Small schools vanish as China transforms rural areas
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Xinhua, October 6, 2011
Huang Xiuru, 12, no longer needs to look at a rudimentary sundial, a nail hammered into a wooden pillar, to tell if class is over for the day.
As a conseuqence of China's policy to upgrade rural education, Huang was sent to a new school near the county seat in 2009 after her old one was closed.
"I miss Teacher Li," Huang said, with tears in her eyes. Li was her teacher at the tiny and now abandoned Shuiquan Primary School, in the county of Chicheng in north Hehei Province.
The school became famous after Zhang Yimou's 1999 award-winning movie "Not One Less."
In China's rural areas, many small, poorly-resourced schools remain.
Shuiquan Primary School once had about 40 students. Sitting in one adobe building, first to fifth grade students shared one teacher for all their subjects.
"When I gave lessons to grade one, I'd ask the other students to do their homework or learn on their own," said Li Xiangping, 52, who taught at the school for 33 years.
"I had to prepare lessons for all subjects for all grades," he said.
Li Chunsheng, an official with the education bureau of Chicheng, said the quality of education at such schools was far below the bigger schools.
"In these schools, there's no music, English or computer classes, because many old teachers can't speak English themselves, and there's no pianos or computers," he said.
According to the Ministry of Education, China had 553,600 primary schools in 2000, but the number dropped by more than half to 257,400 in 2010.
According to the education official, Chicheng, with a population of 292,000, had more than 400 schools 10 years ago. Now there're only 104.
Huang is currently studying at Zhenningpu School, attended by first to ninth graders. It has 270 students and 46 teachers. In her class there are 46 students, about half of whom transferred from closed-down village schools.
"The condition of the new school is better," she said. In the old school, students had no chairs so they all sat on wood blocks supported by bricks.
Xu Yong, a professor of education with Beijing Normal University, believes that through providing better education China can improve the situation in its rural areas. "The major difference of urban and rural education lies in the allocation of education resources."
He said the policy of closing small country schools could well lead to an improvement in the quality of rural education.
But he said a new problem has arisen. "Children can drop out due to poor transportation."
Li, the education official, confirmed that over the past few years there were cases of this happening. Some parents were against the policy, he added.
To attend her new school, about one or two hours on foot from her home, Huang has to live on campus. "My parents didn't want me to leave home, but they had no other option."
Huang's parents pay 300 yuan (46 U.S. dollars) a semester for her to board -- a substantial amount given the family's income is 6,000 yuan per annum.
However, students from impoverished families who live on campus can get an 800-to-1,000-yuan subsidy annually from the government.
Wang Yi, principle of the Zhenningpu School, has some reservations about the policy to close down small-sized rural schools.
Students are not allowed to board until they reach fourth grade as they must be able to take care of themselves. This means these students must attend village schools for at least three years.
And this creates problems, Wang said. Zhenningpu offers English classes from third grade, but village schools don't. "So, our teachers have to give extra lessons to the new students in their spare time to help them catch up."
With more and more students coming to the school, Wang hopes to recruit more teachers.
"There are only a few young teachers because of the low salary," he said. "Most teachers are middle aged and will retire in just a couple of years. We won't have enough teachers for the increasing number of students."
Teacher Li is also approaching the age of retirement, but he wants to continuing teaching.
After Shuiquan Primary School was closed, he started teaching at Zhongsuo School, earning 2,300 yuan a month. The school was about 15 km away from his home, so he and his wife gave up their one hectare of land and moved to live at the school.
Han Bin, 6, is one of the best students in the school. The teacher had written some math problems in his notebook that the boy scribbled the correct answers to almost immediately.
"Second grade math is too easy for me," the boy with a round face and a pair of big eyes said gleefully. "Sometimes when the teacher taught grade three math, I listen as well. I can understand some what he teaches and I want to learn, but the teacher says I'm too 'small.'"
In Chinese, the word "small" has meanings of both young and short, and Han said he wanted to eat more so as to "grow faster."
He hadn't yet been told that soon he would leave the school and the teacher.
Each time after sending students to the next school, Li feels sad.
Huang visited Li during the summer vocation. She also went back to the abandoned school. "Golden sunflowers were growing in the abandoned campus," she said nostalgically.
