Teachers in town offer lifeline to rural schools

Bus journeys, free housing plan working well

At 7 am, 68 teachers board four white buses in Longcheng, a town in Gansu province, for a drive through the mountains to 12 village schools.

After classes, they take the vehicles for the return journey to the town in Qin'an county, where they arrive at about 5:30 pm.

Just seven years ago, Hong Xiaojuan, one of the teachers, was sleeping on a bed made from planks in a cramped, mice-infested dormitory at a school in the village of Zhangwan.

"It's hard to imagine how I got through those tough times," she said.

Now married, the math teacher, 31, and her husband moved in 2016 into a free two-bedroom apartment provided by the local government at an educational park in the town.

Wang Xusheng, president of the park, said, "Dirt-walled faculty housing in rural areas that lets in the rain and the wind scared a number of teachers away in the past.

"Imagine just how frightened a young female teacher would have been living alone on an isolated rural campus at night after school. The free residences in the town have seen the emergence of many qualified teachers for rural pupils."

Before the educational park was built, Hong used to ask one or two students to accompany her to her rural residence at night.

Many schools in rural areas only have basic classes such as Chinese and mathematics, and in some cases English. But the new plan has resulted in 12 music, physical education and art teachers arriving at the village schools twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Zhang Wubin, a PE teacher who travels by bus and teaches at four village schools, has been impressed by a major change in one of his students. When PE lessons began at the school, the boy, who was always quiet and performed poorly in lessons, showed he had a talent for athletics.