Pang lijuan, member of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, vice chairman of the central committee for the advancement of the People's Republic of China, and professor of Beijing normal university, is interviewed with respect to progress made in the construction of rural teacher teams in China and approaches to further refining policies and systems concerned.

Talent revitalizing lies in the core of thriving rural areas with education as its radical route and important guarantee, which has obviously emphasized the significance of construction of teacher teams in village - the first resource for educational development in countryside.

Prof. Pang reckons that it is a must to consummate the policy and systems regarding the construction of teacher teams in rural area. Although current effectiveness is strikingly regional and periodical, disparity between the structure and quality of teacher teams is also attention-grabbing, especially in areas profoundly affected by known urban-rural duel structure and other historical as well as objective factors. Nonetheless, it can be generally attributed to unsatisfactory salary-pays, inadequate social guarantee, and excessive pursuit of professional titles, which all justify shortcomings rife in policy and systems of teacher team construction in rural locations.

Second, Prof. Pang proposes that comprehensive increase should be seen in rural teachers’ rounded treatment. Advices from her are mainly concentrated on strong financial support, stable social guarantee and shelter security policy. In addition, according to Prof. Pang, for rural teachers, their priority should be addressed seriously which is directly linked to the preferred admission of their children into quality schools in town to receive fundamental education.

The third point Prof. Pang makes in response to the reporter revolves around systems for innovate employment of establishment resource, which has been a bottleneck for rural teachers to construct their teams. In Prof. Pang’s words, to get the breakthrough should respect current total volume of establishment as the premise, revamp managerial system of teacher establishment and human resource policy systems through innovation, optimizing structure in a bid to establish the overall mechanism of teacher establishment for prefecture-level planning.

When it comes to growth opportunities open to rural teachers, a question arises as to how much the reform the professional title system can provide as deep concerns exist about teachers’ personal interest. In answering this, Prof. Pang thinks that in professional title system, there should be a substantial tilt towards rural schools, broadening promotion room for rural teachers. On top of that, the number of titles of senior professional posts for leaders in rural schools ought to be individually divided, judged and implemented in parallel with professional titles evaluation of frontline rural teachers in order to avoid squeeze out teachers. Furthermore, special tilt policies should be in place for rural teachers on the front who have been working for a long time to be promoted free from limitations of numbers of positions, even with enough period of teaching span in rural areas, teachers are allowed to get promotion for higher stages.

In the end of the interview, Prof. Pang doesn’t neglect the basic issues to be dealt with: to train high quality rural teachers from the source by immersing them into countryside culture and social environment. Indeed, local conditions should be fully considered in training teachers. On national level, while improving open employment, special post teachers and normal students supported by public fees, there will also be implementation of development plans for directed education of general-subject teachers with public fees, focused on rural culture, knowledge and history to reinforce their teaching ideals, beliefs and emotions in rural areas. Out of humanity concern, some policies aimed at lessoning their financial burdens are also at work.