Ma Dexiu, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has asked the government to give more attention and credit to teachers in remote and poor rural areas for their persistence and hardwork.
According to an article on womenofchina.cn, there are more than 2.8 million rural teachers attending to more than 40 million primary and middle school students in China's rural areas.
Ma, a former party secretary of Shanghai Jiaotong University, said that rural teachers do not get the credit and praise they deserve which resulted in the increasing education gap between the cities and the countryside.
The article said that some teachers were forced to leave their work because of low salary. It cited the case of Zhao Lei who used to teach in a kindergarten in a remote village in Hunan Province and left to work as migrant worker in Changsha, the provincial capital.
Zhao received only more than 1,000 yuan ($162) per month without any extras, the article said.
The report said that many schools find it increasingly difficult to attract, recruit and send teachers, especially in rural areas due to low salary, aside from poor conditions in these areas.
According to UNESCO, more than 60 percent of China's schools are in the countryside and more than half of teachers are deployed in these areas. Working and living conditions are particularly challenging in rural areas, especially mountainous and border ones.
Education authorities said in a statement released on April 8, Wednesday, that education in remote and poor areas in central and western regions is the weakest link in the modernization of education as it called for more substantial reforms in the system.
According to the statement, education is crucial in preventing poverty from spreading to the next generation, which calls for increasing the number of good teachers in poor areas.
Authorities said that this can be done by improving the teachers' political and moral awareness, raising their incomes and encouraging urban teachers through incentives to work in rural schools.