Abstract
The primary aim of this study lies in analyzing the policy of present-day China for employing teachers, focusing on "Teachers' Law of People's Republic of China" (abbrev. to TLPRC), which was enacted on the 1st of January, 1994. This TLPRC orginally intends to lay stress upon two points : the improvement of teachers' quality and ability, and the guarantee of teachers' basic rights to financial and welfare treatment. TLPRC builds up the system of Teachers' Qualification under the item of Qualification, which strictly regulates the employment of unqualified teachers, and under the item of Employment, which, on a merit basis, controls the System of Employing Teachers, who purpose is to raise the standard of teaching ability. As to teachers' treatment, TLPRC has taken measures both for a raise in their salary and allowances in order to correct salary disparities so far greatly disputed, and for the improvement of housing and medical aspects as well. The author believes, however, that the TLPRC presents the following problems when viewed in the light of the teaching society in present-day China (as a matter of reality) : (1) TLPRC has taken little, if any, substantial measures, for not a small percentage of Chinese teachers are paid by the local educational authorities. (2) The present system of obtaining a teaching licence through a series of sessions study and teaching has been lowering the professionalism of China's traditional teacher training educational system. (3) TLPRC does not yet suggest any effective measures for improving teachers' treatment to be financially guaranteed. (4) TLPRC does not have enough wider and authoritative publicity and coercion as a policy-making law. What has been mentioned above is very suggestive of TLPRC having a higher possibility of widening an unabridgeable gap between TLPRC and the unsettled reality of China's teaching society, to which the Law should be applicable. The Law tends not so much to develop a new teachers' educational system in present-day China, with the traditional teacher training educational system as its core, as to take measures to cope with the present situations to find a way out. The author has observed in TLPRC the discrepancy between the theory of the Law and its inapplicability to the unfavourable situation China faces today.
