Reform and Development of Jiayuguan’s Education
The gross enrollment rate for the three-year preschool education has reached 97.8%, the completion rate for compulsory education has reached 99.77%, and the gross enrollment rate for high school education has reached 95.12%. In 2017, the overall admission rate for higher education reached 95.33%, surpassing the provincial level by 15%; and the admission rate for undergraduate higher education institutions above the third level reached 69.62%, higher than the provincial level by 30% and topping the whole province… Last year, the education of Jiayuguan saw many such joyful achievements, each of which, big or small, witnessed our efforts in developing the undertaking of education and showed new power and new hope for a better education in the near future.
Education in a Strategic Position with Priority
“Look at our school! The teaching building not only looks wonderful, it is also very sturdy, resist to magnitude 7 earthquakes, and fireproof. As a village school, it is as good as those in cities,” said Principle Yang Yongke of Xincheng Middle School about the improved teaching conditions of the new school, beaming.
Changes swiftly come; and happiness naturally follows.
“The change has to do with the efforts of the municipal party committee and government. They take education as the greatest concern for people’s lives, and has improved the teaching conditions and done everything to let every child receive good education,” said Wang Lin, the director of the municipal education bureau.
A series of government policies have been released to coordinate the planning, distribution and management of our education, including the Opinions on Advancing the Balanced Development of Compulsory Education, the Methods for Pushing forward the Reform and Development of Preschool Education of Jiayuguan, the Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Modern Occupational Education, the Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Private Education, the Methods for Implementing the Supporting Plan (2015-2020) for Village Teachers of Jiayuguan…
In the recent two years, the municipal party committee and government have further increased the fiscal investment with a plan of ¥300 million for 18 basic education construction projects to commence or continue concerning renovation or reconstruction. These concrete investments have transformed into a great power to send our educational development on a fast track. Middle and primary schools in both new and old city areas and kindergartens have been built, reconstructed, expanded or renovated. Distribution of middle and primary schools for compulsory education and kindergartens has been adjusted, with their teaching conditions improved. Newly built schoolhouses cover more than 30000 square meters of construction area, reconstructed and expanded schoolhouses cover nearly 60000 square meters of area, renovated schoolhouses cover 35000 square meters of area, and reconstructed sports fields cover about 36000 square meters of area. Moreover, a total of 8 comprehensive or characteristic labs and classrooms with disciplinary functions are newly built; the pilot project for intelligent campus has seen great progress, with the “Express Classrooms” teaching system installed to gradually deepen the network teaching and research and application of network resources.
“The 11th Party Congress of Jiayuguan put forth goals and a wonderful blueprint for the future development of the whole city, and we will strive to make the grand blueprint a reality. Strong intellectual and personnel resources are required to shore up such a development, and education should bear such a heavy responsibility. To this end, the municipal party committee proposed to make education a priority and constantly enhance its quality…”said the municipal party secretary Wang Yan in last Teachers’ Day, stressing the great importance of education and inspiring many teachers to stick to their commitments of devoting themselves to the undertaking of education.
Growing Development Momentum
In every Teachers’ Day, many excellent teachers, class advisors and model teachers for morality, who have long worked hard at the grassroots of education, get a chance to step into our view. They are only representatives of the teachers’ group, yet behind them stand thousands of teachers who love their job and selflessly devote all their energy to this noble occupation as the architect of human morality.
Teachers are the foundation of education, and the key to improving the quality of teaching. Adhering to the working guideline of “Improving education and schools by good teachers”, we have made great efforts in establishing and improving the construction system for teachers, and in enhancing their awareness of morality and teaching skills, so that a great progress has been made in the construction of teaching staff.
“Since the last time I joined the discussion about building teaching ethics and morality with the theme of ‘How to become a teacher that people are satisfied with’, I discreetly checked myself for deficiencies and improved my teaching methods. Now my students become more interested in my Chinese class…” said a Chinese teacher from the Jiayuguan No. 1 Middle School while collectively preparing lessons in a Chinese teaching group, sharing with others the recent change.
Events are effective in carrying forward the teaching ethics. We have organized a deep-reaching event themed with “Construction Year for Teaching Ethics and Morality”. By stressing the disciplinary restraints at major festivals like Mid-Autumn Day and National Day and through grassroots models like Yan Guizhen and He Junhai, we give full play to the demonstration and leading effects of these models, inspire every teacher to set high standards for and be strict with themselves, keep regulating their teaching and educating behaviors, and treat every student equally.
Diligent studying is the foundation of better grades. Through micro lessons, competition in electronic whiteboard skills, work collection in information skills and many other events, we have strengthened the training of teachers in information skills and application, and further promoted the deep integration of information technology and teaching practice. In the recent two years, we have organized 21 national-level training programmes, 47 provincial-level training programmes and 16 municipal-level training programmes, with trainees totaling 8110. Moreover, we have provided the “self-selection” training for teachers to satisfy their practical needs. A total of 74 teachers and mid-level cadres have gone through inter-school communication, and over 300 lessons or times of activities have been conducted.
“Unbelievable, I can’t believe my ears! I thought it was nearly impossible for me to get the qualification as a senior teacher before retirement. After all, it is a generally hard-to-get title for all…” said Wang Lianjun, a teacher from the Jiayuguan No. 5 Middle School, exhilarated after knowing he would be accredited as senior teacher.
Just as Principal Zhou Zhe of the Jiayuguan No. 1 Middle School said, our promise to guarantee the rights and interests of teachers will not stay in words, papers, meetings, but will become specific tasks for every relevant department and organization to fulfill; only in this way can our teachers get real benefits and feel our sincerity.
In recent years, we have intensively released a series of policies and measures to protect the interests of teachers, such as The Opinions on Appraising Teachers for Professional Teaching Titles, which is intended for encouraging administrators to promote excellent teachers and raise their professional titles and remuneration even in an unconventional way. Multiple departments in public sectors reform, finance and education have concentrated their efforts and coordinated with each other to ease teachers’ difficulty in getting a higher professional teaching title, thus have effectively solved the problem that has curbed the educational development for years, and 365 teachers are granted the junior or senior professional teaching titles. Policies are inclined to the village teachers and class advisors, and the performance-based salary for a rural teacher has been raised by 15%, or over ¥400 monthly, so that the work activeness of rural teachers is greatly enhanced and the rural teaching staff is stabilized. In order to solve the problem in reviewing performance-based remuneration concerning the special allowance for class advisors which draws much attention from teachers, we have conducted extensive studies and issued the policies to standardize class advisors’ allowance. According to the new policies, class advisors in kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school and secondary vocational school could receive special allowances of ¥400, ¥500, ¥500, ¥500, ¥400 respectively. This has greatly mobilized the work activeness of class advisors. And the ¥6 million fund needed to implement the policies for a year will be included in the municipal budget annually.
Fully Invigorated Internal Driving Force
“My daughter used to study in a private school in Xi’an. She came back to attend a Jiayuguan school last autumn. Why did we do that? Because nowadays schools in Jiayuguan are well equipped with good facilities and soft power, nobody bothers to go out,” Ms. Wang Qin told a reporter at the Jiayuguan Experimental Middle School when waiting to pick up his daughter after school.
The confidence of people in Jiayuguan’s education comes from our efforts in pushing forward the comprehensive reform on education, which aims to invigorate the educational development and actively adapt out work to meet the new demands and hopes of people.
- We will keep deepening the mode of “giving help to private kindergartens by management area and developing all the kindergartens as a whole”. We have divided the 43 private kindergartens into 6 management areas according to their locations, and designated public kindergartens to help them. In the recent three years, 31 affordable private kindergartens were appraised, 20 kindergartens were accredited as municipal-level standard kindergartens, and 4 were accredited as provincial-level first-class kindergartens. This year, the municipal party committee and government have put the task of “supporting the development of preschool education” in programmes for improving people’s lives, and appropriated ¥10.75 million for the implementation.
- We will continue to promote the balanced development of compulsory education. We will continue to carry out the project of “5321” school alliances, which means all the middle and primary schools in Jiayuguan will be divided into 3 big regional alliances and 10 small school alliances. Unified teaching management will be applied to the alliances, and schools in the alliances can share their teaching resources, facilities and equipment, so as to advance the joint construction and sharing of quality resources and scientific allocation of regional teaching resources.
- We will deeply promote the characteristic, brand development of schools. Aiming to realize characteristic, brand development, we are endeavoring to build “each school with its own characteristic and brand”. Overall we have built up 25 characteristic teaching programmes, of which 11 provincial-level programmes are available in 20 schools, 5 national-level programmes are available in 6 schools. Jiayuguan has also been chosen as a national experimental zone for appraising students’ arts quality.
- We will enhance the attractiveness of modern occupational education. We will actively explore the operational modes for schools and enterprise to cooperate with each other. Based on the economic development conditions of Jiayuguan, cooperation is carried out between schools and Jiuquan Iron&Steel Group, Gansu Zhongmao Group and Huaqiang Group etc. Employment rate for secondary vocational school students has reached 96.3%, and in the 2016 and 2017 Provincial Occupational Skills Competitions, the rate of first prizes won by vocational students topped the whole province. 35 students passed the special entrance examinations to further their study in higher vocational colleges; 14 students out of 16 students who had attended the college entrance examinations were admitted to undergraduate colleges. Gansu Iron and Steel Vocational Technical College has joined efforts with the municipal Science and Technology Bureau to build the “Shangneng Crowd innovation Space”, for the purpose of improving the innovative capabilities and entrepreneurship of students and has greatly pushed forward the new development of modern vocational education.
- We will deepen the grid-based management for campus safety. With emphasis on life education, psychological health education and safety skills training, we have built up a grid-based management system for campus safety, which is corresponding to the municipal “safety cells project”. The construction of “digital safe campus” is further advanced, with one-button police-calling devices connected to the police network installed in every school in the city. A digital grid management platform has been built to realize full coverage of video surveillance on key school areas. The project for ensuring school bus safety with high starting point and standards has been implemented, with all routes run by special school buses and extended to every administrative village. The nutrition improvement plan for rural compulsory education schools is fully carried out, with all the schools in the province being equipped with canteens.
Diverse Development of Vocational Education
At the key stage for China to transform “low-end manufacturing” to “high-end manufacturing”, the urban development calls for a more urgent demand for high-quality technical personnel and skilled worker than any time before, and the aspiration to develop vocational education has reached an all time high.
In order to speed up the development of modern vocational education in Jiayuguan, comprehensively improve the quality of vocational schools and colleges in teaching and personnel training, and to provide abundant human resources and intellectual resources for the transformation of economic society and adjustment and upgrade of industrial structure, under much emphasis and unremitting efforts of the municipal party committee and government for active planning and seeking opportunities, as a result, on April 9th, the municipal government and Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) Education Group signed a framework agreement for strategic cooperation, aiming to join the resources of the Jiuquan Iron-Steel Group and the SJTU Education Group to make achievements in 10 aspects, including building a Sino-Germany Academy, a Germany-SJTU HWK training, examination and certification center for automobile inspection and repairing, an “innovation and entrepreneurship academy”, a hi-tech business incubator and other platforms, as well as building leading professions and advantaged profession clusters.
Director Wang Lin of Jiayuguan Education Bureau said to the reporter that, the construction of Sino-Germany Academy would be led by government by making use of the idle land in the new campus of Gansu Iron and Steel Vocational Technical College, and the academy would run as a private entity, employ the PPP mode and bring in social capital, and it would use the German “Dual System” training mode. In the next year, the academy will open up majors including mechatronics, automobile inspecting and repairing, electric automatization, machinery design and manufacture, intelligent logistics, tourist services and management, and by cooperation with enterprises, it will enroll students to form 3-5 classes and gradually expand its size. By 2020, it will have about 2000 students at school, and in the long term, it aims to build itself as a university of applied sciences.
Special Group Enjoying Extra Care
There is a special group of students encompassing children with intellectual disability, body disability and limb disability, impoverished students and migrant workers’ children. In people’s eyes, they are unfortunate, for compared with normal children, they have all kinds of life difficulties; yet they are fortunate, for we care more for their health and growth.
In recent years, we have comprehensively implemented all kinds of national and provincial policies and measures for this special group, equally treating them in resources allocation and educational opportunities, and give them more care and help.
A guiding centre for special education has been built in high standards, and the education fund for the special group and teachers’ remuneration is fully appropriated. Disabled children who study in middle or primary schools are provided with professional guidance, and special education is scheduled to extent to preschools and middle schools, so as to ensure better education for these special students with disabilities.
Educational policies for benefiting people have been fully implemented, such as the two exemptions and one subsidy for students in compulsory education and special subsistence for students from poor families. Educational assistance has covered all impoverished students and vulnerable students from preschools to universities, leaving no students dropping out of school because of their families in poverty. Since 2016, over ¥20 million has been spent on assisting more than 30000 students. Children in preschool education enjoy the exemption of educational fees or are reimbursed for the fees. Every child who is registered in Gansu province and attends kindergartens of Jiayuguan can receive ¥1000 annually as a standard subsidy for educational fees.
Migrant workers’ children can have equal access to schools in their vicinity as other city children. Migrant workers’ children can enjoy equal treatment in educational opportunities and preferential policies as other children in the city without any restriction upon them. 62% of the total enrollment of provincial-level demonstration common high schools should be allocated to every middle school (a bigger 65% to rural schools), so as to promote the balanced development of compulsory education, to alleviate the pressure of primary student to be admitted to better middle schools, and to provide more opportunities for students in weak middle schools to attend excellent high schools.
We develop the education for the children, and we improve the education also for the children. Standing at a higher level, we will continue our efforts and make more progress in education with greater enthusiasm, to give every child of Jiayuguan a better future.
