Both government and education fall under the category of public service, and thus their identities are interchangeable.

Zhang Chenghao (Dazhong Daily): Even though teachers deserve more social respect, they are generally treated as being on a lower level than civil servants.

The social status and income of teachers are not fair, which discourages a lot of talented people from entering the career and results in many capable teachers leaving the profession to seek work elsewhere. This could be averted if teachers were classified as civil servants.

The emergence of neighboring Japan and South Korea is partly due to their focus on education. In an attempt to balance allocation of teaching resources, Japanese teachers will have to shift between different schools, at least once every seven years.

Guarantee teachers' rights

Ou Muhua (www.china.com.cn): Making teachers government employees, which envisions a greater government role in the education field, is not enough to solve all problems in current education system.

Nevertheless, teachers-turned-civil servants could be unequally treated due to different job categories. Not to mention how education authorities might deal with a large number of contracted teachers or temporary school faculties.

Japanese teachers voluntarily accept job rotations, because there is no big difference between rural and urban areas in terms of job benefits. But in China, urban teachers will have more benefits than those in underdeveloped rural areas. This means it could be difficult to keep good teachers in rural areas for a long time.

Yang Guodong (www.qianlong.com): Apart from those being dismissed or quitting, employment as a civil servant is comparatively stable. If teachers were classified as civil servants, badly performing teachers would stay longer, which is of course harmful to students. But good teachers could choose government positions, which would cause more education staff losses.

Being civil servants may not be the only solution to improve education quality. The key is to strictly follow the existing laws and regulations, or to unify salary standards of all school teachers to a level no lower than the national average of government departments. As part of education investment, the Central Government may finance provincial budgets to achieve this goal.

Wang Xudong (www.xinhuanet.com): The reason why the proposal has been put forward is because teachers' rights and interests haven't been well-protected, and education resources have not been allocated reasonably. Teachers who want to be classified as civil servants are actually seeking the protection of their rights and interests.

The rights and interests of teachers should be equally well protected regardless of how they are classified. As government jobs are increasingly popular, more positions will be given to teachers, which will increase uneven allocation of social resources.

In addition, poor rural areas are far less appealing to university students by contrast to major schools in big cities. As the education gap widens, it will hurt the overall system in the long run.

Liu Changfeng (www.hlj.net): Zhu thought that once teachers have been classed as civil servants, they are obliged to serve in rural education. But he may not have noted that government's image has been boosted in the process, which will mislead the public that the allocation of social resources is based on classification, not the value of labor.

The current problem facing our education is regional imbalance in terms of resource distribution, and to solve this problem will take the full guarantee of teachers' rights and interests.