Abstract
Across the world, certain schools struggle to recruit and retain qualified teachers. This study explores teacher mobility across schools in rural China. Using a dataset from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, this study investigates how teacher’s initial job placement relates to teacher mobility across schools. The findings show that non-local teachers whose initial placements were not in their hometowns were more likely to switch schools. Non-local teachers were also more likely to move for family reasons, compared to moving for personal development or due to involuntary transfer by the local government. The findings suggest that localized recruitment and deployment of teachers can be valuable for reducing teacher mobility rate and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff areas.
Highlights
A substantial amount of research suggests that, among all school resources, high-quality teachers are crucial determinants of student achievement [1,2,3]
Policies addressing the shortage of qualified teachers in remote rural areas have been issued, including the Free Teacher Education (FTE) policy, the Special Post Teacher (SPT) policy, and a teacher rotation policy
How does the first job placement related to teacher mobility?
Summary
A substantial amount of research suggests that, among all school resources, high-quality teachers are crucial determinants of student achievement [1,2,3]. A number of studies on teacher mobility have shown that efforts focused solely on recruiting teachers are often ineffective, as highly qualified teachers tend to sort themselves from high-poverty, low-performing schools to schools that serve more advantaged students [11,12,13,14]. Policies addressing the shortage of qualified teachers in remote rural areas have been issued, including the Free Teacher Education (FTE) policy, the Special Post Teacher (SPT) policy, and a teacher rotation policy. The SPT uses alternative recruitment strategies to attract college graduates to become teachers in impoverished rural schools. Despite first job placements of teachers that match less-qualified teachers with hard-to-staff schools and underdeveloped areas, the lack of high-quality teachers in these schools and areas could result from teacher turnover, including teachers who exit teaching and transfer to other schools. The findings indicate that, in addition to recruiting new teachers for hard-to-staff schools, it is crucial to retain teachers in rural areas via localized recruitment and deployment of teachers
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