After the New Year, the annual family year-end report is finally over. Truth be told, who was assigned to the children's table? However, the filial sons and daughters who got the teaching offer are likely to spend a comfortable year that has been boasted.
Teachers with winter and summer vacations, stable jobs, and simple workplace relationships are how many Chinese parents choose a good career?
Among them, primary and secondary school teachers are the dream job of many young people. Unlike kindergarten teachers, who need to learn and sing, unlike high school teachers who are burdened with KPIs that focus on the cost rate, unlike university teachers who struggle in "either promotion or leaving", and not like teachers in education and training institutions, they are in a declining industry and face the risk of losing their jobs at any time.
It's easy and decent, isn't it too happy to be a primary and secondary school teacher?
The teachers said: really not!
Note: The "teachers" discussed in this article are mainly primary and secondary school teachers).
Said good "dream job",
It's so tiring
The "idle and stable" teaching position in the public's impression has naturally become a "sweet spot" in the job market. Nowadays, every young primary and secondary school teacher who stands on the podium has probably gone through the fierce competition of "thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge".
This competition for the love job of the dream has kicked off since the student days.
In the past, the admission score of normal universities exceeded 985 colleges and universities[1], and among the top 30% of outstanding graduates in the province in many places, more than half or nearly half of them applied for normal majors [2].
Later, there was the "Happy Parents Certificate" - the number of applicants for the teacher qualification examination increased by 66 times in decades, from 17 in 201220,000 people, jumping to 1,144 in 202220,000 people [3].
In Shenzhen, where the demand for teacher recruitment is rising, in May 2022, a total of 23,601 people applied for 817 teaching positions, with an average admission ratio of only 35%。Among them, the most popular position, the recruitment ratio is only 025%[4]。You know, even Harvard University can reach 3% of the applicants [5].
However, successfully landing as a teacher may be far from the end of the hard work.
Some people have concluded that in primary and secondary schools, "education" has another cruel name, called "three guarantees": security, cleaning, and nanny.
Regardless of whether or not before joining the company, whether or not they have a beautiful fantasy about children, and who have personally practiced the word "basic education", there is actually a lot of sadness behind the smile.
Primary and secondary school teachers who are often smiling are actually under a lot of pressure at work
The data also supports this.
According to a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, the average working hours of primary and secondary school teachers per week are 5254 hours, only 1393% of teachers do not work overtime on weekends. Among the more than 2,000 teachers surveyed, they felt that the workload was "relatively heavy" (596%) and "very heavy" (197%) accounted for nearly eighty percent (79.).3%) [6].
The work experience of a primary and secondary school teacher is even more tiring than that of a high school teacher who has worked hard and faced the college entrance examination.
A survey of 1,140 teachers across the country showed significant differences in work engagement. Middle school teachers have the highest level of engagement, followed by elementary school teachers, and high school teachers have the lowest level [7].
In terms of "work dedication", there are significant differences in job titles and ages. "Teachers with unrated professional titles", including the vast majority of young teachers, have the highest level of dedication [7]. Young teachers aged 26-35 also have the heaviest class hours among teachers of all ages [8]. Young people who want to devote themselves to basic education obviously need some sense of conviction.
Today, the typical routine of a junior class teacher may be as follows: 4 morning lessons, 5 afternoon reading sessions, 10 recess exercises, 8 after-school services, and 15 regular lessons per week [9]. In his spare time, he handles student disputes, checks class hygiene, and rectifies class discipline.
After work, prepare evaluation materials, prepare to participate in competitions, correct homework, prepare for open classes, write a diary of lectures, and participate in training [9]. Lie down**, turn on your phone, and start replying to the message ...... of the school group, grade group, class group, and parent private chat window
After work, teachers also have endless work to do.
When the head teacher and the main subject teacher rotated continuously, the deputy subject teacher did not go to the ** easily.
In many schools, the main and secondary subject teachers are likely to be the same person.
According to a survey on the workload of primary and secondary school teachers in Shandong Province, the average number of primary school teachers is 186 jobs, 1 job per capita31, 53Fourteen percent of primary school teachers hold other positions [10].
A junior high school physics teacher interviewed taught 6 periods of physics, 6 periods of physical education, and 2 periods of school-based curriculum per week, and also served as the class teacher, grade director, and secretary of the school's Youth League [10].
The teacher of sound and physical beauty is also very bitter in his heart. In addition to teaching, because they are often considered to be "idle at work", most of the chores of organizing competitions, rehearsing programs for inspection, and arranging display boards fall on them.
Teachers in rural areas are busier.
Rural teachers tend to have more work than urban teachers.
** stipulates that all publicly-funded normal students who go to work in cities and towns are obliged to teach in rural compulsory education schools for at least one year [11]. In rural schools, it is common for a "general subject teacher" to teach the entire grade level by one person [12].
In 2022, teaching and auxiliary staff and service personnel in ordinary middle schools accounted for 859%[13], or 473%[14], the proportion of rural staff is lower than that in urban areas, so most of the logistics and management of schools are also carried out by teachers.
I'm finally looking forward to the winter and summer vacations, so I can always touch the fish now, right? The answer is no.
A spatio-temporal follow-up survey of an elementary school teacher showed that in addition to the 8-hour working hours stipulated by the system, the respondents had only 343% of the time is spent on personal leisure.
During the winter vacation, the proportion of entertainment time is slightly **, but it is still only 192%。During the two-month summer vacation, 62 respondents were interviewed5% of the time was spent on work matters, and even participated in half a month of teacher training [15].
For young teachers who are in the growth period of their careers and have insufficient experience in teaching management, it is difficult to "lie flat". The enviable winter and summer vacations are likely to be filled with "platter-style" lectures, online courses, and personal reflection summaries.
Primary and secondary school teacher,
What exactly are you busy with every day?
Obviously, primary and secondary school teachers are busy.
However, it may surprise you that the above "teaching" and "nurturing" affairs are only a small part of a teacher's work.
According to a survey of nearly 50,000 primary and secondary school teachers across the country, teachers averaged 5143 hours of work, only 963 hours (18.)72%) were spent on teaching tasks [16].
For reference, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey shows that the average weekly working hours of junior high school teachers in 48 countries and regions around the world is 383 hours, of which about 206 hours (53.)7%) for teaching.
Among them, Japan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Vietnam, and other countries with the lowest proportion of teaching time also account for between 31% and 40% of teaching time [17].
In contrast, primary and secondary school teachers in China work the longest working hours per week, but the proportion of teaching time is the lowest among all countries and regions.
What have the teachers been busy with for such a long time?
A lot of the time that takes up the most of the teacher's working time is not the task of teaching Diagram Worm Creative
In a 2017 survey of 2,787 primary and secondary school teachers across the country, teachers said that the four tasks that took the longest time each day were: completing various types of inspections at all levels (684%), and participated in non-teaching tasks assigned on an ad hoc basis (541%), completing various types of online learning (411%) and participate in training at all levels and types of meetings (331%）[18]。
As the "front-line executive staff" of the education system, teachers face pressure from multiple administrations.
Among them, there are various departments of the Education Bureau, education supervision institutions, teacher training, teaching and research departments, teaching departments, audio-visual education halls, youth palaces, workers and young women, as well as various committees, societies and associations. There are teaching and research groups, grade groups, academic affairs, teaching subjects, personnel, finance, party groups, and women's organizations [19].
Meetings, trainings, inspections and documentation** in each department add up to a staggering amount of work.
Similar "manual work" is so common that the Ministry of Education designated 2019 as the "Year of Reducing the Burden on the Grassroots"[20], and in December of the same year, the General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) officially issued the "Twenty Measures for Reducing the Burden on Teachers", which clearly required the reduction of social affairs on campus [21].
From the study of teachers' burden reduction policies, we can get a glimpse of these "negatives" include evaluation and assessment, social affairs, report filling and borrowing and other categories. In addition to routine actions such as skill competitions, you can even see quite "outrageous" matters such as protocol reception, investment promotion, and demolition [22].
When you were a student, did you imitate the names of your parents on various notification receipts such as urban excellence, fire construction, anti-drug demonstration, Seventh Five-Year Law Popularization Archives, vector biological control, water and electricity saving, traffic safety, and consumer rights protection? They are also actually part of the non-teaching work of primary and secondary school teachers [18].
There's a really wide range of work that teachers need to deal with Picture Worm Creative.
China Education Daily once reported on the work of 55 primary school teachers and 20 middle school teachers in a poor township.
It was found that in addition to educating poor children, teachers should also help households with five guarantees and low-income guarantees, raise chickens, raise sheep, plant fruit trees, and work for poor households without industry. Each of these items has an indicator requirement.
On weekends, teachers have to visit each village to conduct research, complete regular silhouette filing, fill in **, and write a support plan. If it is not implemented, it will be criticized and punished [23].
As time and energy are diverted from administrative tasks, teachers are bound to pay less attention to their students. The inability to devote themselves to even the most important teaching work has caused many teachers to feel disappointed and guilty [24].
Not only that, but the constant distraction of tedious chores also makes the teachers' working hours fragmented, making it difficult to think deeply about a problem. Exhausted teachers, they feel that they have lost control of their work, and their personal and professional development gradually turns into a mechanical act of "selling their labor force for survival" [25].
A teacher who is physically and mentally exhausted,
I don't make much money
If "996" can be exchanged for a good reward, looking at the balance of the deposit, and self-comforting, then relying on the educational ideal of "generating electricity for love" really makes the teachers a little unbearable.
The Shenzhen Education Bureau, which previously had a high-profile "throwing money and grabbing people" and offering a generous treatment of "an annual salary of 280,000+, 165 days of paid leave throughout the year", has been rumored to cut salaries in the past few years after the heated discussions. A number of teachers in Shenzhen said that their pension allowances, family planning awards, and other allowances have been cancelled [26].
Teachers who were once attracted by the "200,000 guaranteed annual salary" and joined primary and secondary schools in a development zone in Yantai, Shandong Province, also reported on social platforms that the school notified the refund of part of the bonuses, allowances, and subsidies issued from January 2021, and the refund amount may reach 50,000-100,000 yuan [27].
In fact, the enviable figures in the news may be far from the real salaries of primary and secondary school teachers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2022, the average annual salary of employees in the education industry in urban non-private units was 12040,000 yuan [28], the annual salary of personnel in the education industry in the private sector is about 5270,000 yuan [29].
Only a handful of primary and secondary schools can offer teachers an enviable salary.
If the average salary is too broad, in 2019, a survey of more than 10,000 primary and secondary school teachers in more than 20 provinces across the country by Northeast Normal University gave more details.
The average monthly salary of teachers who participated in the survey was 4,32461 yuan, of which only 30% of teachers have a monthly salary of more than 5,000 yuan. The average monthly salary of teachers in the eastern region is 513317 yuan, more than 1,000 yuan higher than the central region, and nearly 1,500 yuan higher than the western region [30].
Having enough money can have a direct impact on employee motivation and satisfaction – even for primary and secondary school teachers. According to the China Teacher Development Report 2020-2021, 47Thirty-five percent of the primary and secondary school teachers surveyed believe that improving economic benefits is the most important measure to improve teachers' professional well-being [31].
45.Eighty-one percent of the teachers surveyed believe that "unequal pay and pay" is the primary reason for their lack of professional well-being, which is even more troublesome than "heavy and cumbersome workload" and "difficult for students to manage" [31].
Many teachers have been doomed out of their enthusiasm for their work by the meager salaries of Visual China.
How hot the educational sentiment burned when I first joined the company, how quickly it was extinguished by the salary slip. A survey of primary and secondary school teachers in Beijing showed that when they joined the company, 531% of teachers wanted to find a stable job, and only 5% of the respondents chose to join the company because of the most suitable salary, salary, and housing conditions [32].
However, when asked about the main reasons for leaving school, 743% of teachers chose "poor salary and benefits" [32].
Is there a legal way for teachers to increase their income? Of course, the answer is, but whether you want to get more year-end bonuses with the help of performance appraisal or increase your salary through professional title evaluation, the proportion of teaching routine and teaching performance in the relevant evaluation rules is only 30%-40%[33][34].
In other words, a young teacher who does not participate in teaching and research, competitions, and honorary awards, does not have sufficient qualifications and teaching experience, and devotes himself to teaching, is likely to not get much material feedback in addition to the basic salary.
What's more, the former "iron rice bowl" is not only not so fragrant, it doesn't seem to be so "iron" anymore. In 2020, one for the whole country 7In the survey of 20,000 "post-90s" primary and secondary school teachers, the proportion of respondents included in the enrollment was only 4537%。The proportion of teachers in primary and junior high schools is as follows. 01%, less than half [35].
In addition, teachers also have to pay a lot of emotional labor and communication costs, and bear the professional ethics pressure of "learning as a teacher". Have you ever seen a hot Internet meme that imitates the tone of students' parents and asks for an explanation for "Our Family Zihan"? Behind this paragraph, it is not difficult to see the tense relationship between home and school, and the scarce trust.
Overload of work leads to lack of sleep for teachers Diagram Worm Creative.
All these burdens have had a negative impact on the physical and mental health of teachers. According to the China Teacher Development Report 2020-2021, 4580% of teachers often don't get enough sleep because of their work, 47Seventy-two percent of teachers felt visibly unwell [31].
Teacher exhaustion seems to be a global phenomenon. According to the Teacher Happiness Index released by the British Education Support Organization in 2022, 78% of teachers experienced symptoms of discomfort. The rates of teachers experiencing stress (75 percent), anxiety (44 percent), and depression (27 percent) were significantly higher than the general average [36].
It is no wonder that a young teacher wrote in his suicide note: "How can an unhappy teacher teach a positive and optimistic child? ”[37]
Is teaching still a good enough career choice today? This question may be worth thinking about again.