Are Fruits of Free Normal Education Policy Real or Mythical? A Critical Appraisal of the Free Teacher Education Policy Meant to Promote Rural Education in China

Abstract

Since September 2007, the Ministry of Education of China has been implementing a policy called ‘Free Normal Education’ (FNE) for college students majoring in education in normal universities. The central goal for FNE is to promote quality of education by providing rural areas with high quality teachers who are bonded through their tuition- free training. This study analysis has shown that after more than five years of implementation, it is unfortunately evident that FNE may not achieve its key objective of improving rural education. There are many reasons attributed to this drawback. But the most serious one is that the government only emphasizes on providing teachers in rural areas without caring about the general welfare and salary motivations that the rural teachers would get. Further, there are no clear structures to ensure that students trained through the FNE policy would necessarily stay in rural areas. This paper, therefore, recommends that multiple measures, with a holistic view, should be taken so that the policy is supported to achieve its intended goal.