Primary and secondary school teachers should be entitled to the same rights as civil servants. That's the proposal put forward by academician Zhu Qingshi, former president of the Beijing-based University of Science and Technology of China.

"It is necessary to achieve a rational allocation of teaching resources between urban and rural areas," said Zhu, who is trying to encourage more teachers to serve the vast rural population by offering them various job benefits usually reserved for government employees.

Zhu's proposal is in response to the huge shortage of teachers in China's rural areas. Most teachers working in rural areas, where talented people can hardly be attracted, are lower paid with less insurance and housing guarantees compared to their urban counterparts. Statistics on national education revealed that 508 counties had no more than one foreign language teacher each by 2008. Worse still, the proportion of students from rural areas in Chinese universities has dramatically shrunk as a result of brain drain in schools.

The stability and welfare of a government career now holds greater appeal, however, the idea of teachers as civil servants has stirred intense debate. Of netizens polled on Sohu.com, a major portal website, almost three quarters favor the proposal. Those opposing the idea thought Chinese teachers have generally been granted better job welfare than the average worker, and to give them the same social status and benefits as government employees will add to the local governments' financial burdens. They also pointed out that the improvement of teaching quality has no direct link to benefits of the employment.

Supporters argued that, how could this add extra financial burdens if local governments observe the Teachers Law strictly, since it stipulates that teachers should be paid no less than government employees? On the contrary, more youths would be encouraged to join the teaching ranks if social status and living conditions for teaching staff were improved, they believe.

It is in fact a common practice to bring teachers' wages on par with government employees in countries that prioritize education issues, according to experts on educational affairs. In Japan, presidents or teachers of public schools are authorized to have the same status as government employees, while faculties of public schools are seen as civil servants who enjoy equal salaries based on law. Neighboring South Korea is also planning to reform its education system by changing teachers into public servants, they say.

Respect teachers

Liu Hui (www.cnhubei.com): China's Compulsory Education Law requiring wages of teachers to be on par with civil servants has been around for almost two decades. But a marked contrast of career differences between teachers and government jobs are still obvious. It seems that teachers have been legally recognized but in reality they have not yet obtained enough social respect. Without supplementary rules, violations of the Teachers Law go unpunished, whereas government employees often see an improvement in their social status and raised income levels.

If more teachers are motivated to serve the rural population through this proposal, it will help close the rural-urban gap to achieve education equilibrium. If graduates of normal schools could be given the same job benefits as civil servants, it would significantly expand the talent pool for teachers, and to attract more top students to the ranks of teaching will help optimize education resources and improve their quality.

Last but not the least, if teachers are allowed to change their status to civil servants and vice versa, it will largely help to ease the stress of low-income teachers.

Zhang Guifeng (Taihang Daily): It is necessary to move teachers to a status of civil servants because teachers are currently struggling with low incomes and even lower social status. To increase job advantages is a possible solution to fundamentally change the situation. In spite of protection rules, teachers' perks are indisputably lower than civil servants' in most cases. On one hand, university students are reluctant to be teachers because of poor benefits. On the other hand, they are desperately struggling to fill job vacancies in government departments because of good welfare. If teachers are classified as civil servants, or at least their welfare benefits are standardized with those of civil servants, stability will return to the profession.