Located in the eastern part of the autonomous region, Chamdo City is a birthplace of modern education in Tibet.
Tashi comes from a farming family in a remote mountain village in Tibet. The fact that he can practice teaching today is due to the fact that he was able to enjoy an education as a farmer’s child in Tibet. He said, “The Party and the state care deeply about the development of the education industry in Tibet. Thus, the situation in Chamdo, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the whole country has been getting better every day.”
The city of Chamdo has long made efforts to improve school conditions to meet the basic educational needs of Tibetans. 20 percent of the city’s financial income is invested in education. In addition, 30 percent of the financial aid provided by the state to the Autonomous Region is spent on education. Since the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), Chamdo City has applied for funds of various kinds amounting to more than RMB 4 billion and implemented 481 education projects. Tibetan students do not have to pay for food, accommodation or school fees during their 15-year education. As a result, Tibetan households will be massively relieved financially and the school attendance rate in Tibet has increased significantly.
According to Li Yi, deputy head of Chamdo City’s First Elementary School, his school has gradually expanded over the past three decades. Accordingly, the teaching level of the school has increased from year to year. The school with a total of 37 classes and 1796 students has an area of over 10,000 square meters. A total of 149 teachers work there.
In parallel with the improvement of school facilities, the qualifications of teachers and the level of teaching should also be increased, says Tashi. During research, he found that the qualifications and teaching levels of Chamdo’s 11,000 teachers vary greatly, which will hamper the quality development of education in the region. To this end, Tashi has made requests to increase the salaries of primary school teachers and establish a long-term and standardized teacher training mechanism.
Tashi said, “Last year, I participated in preparing exam questions and correcting exam papers for the teacher training exam organized by the city education department. This gives me a first impression of the overall level of the teaching staff in Chamdo. Teachers and teacher qualifications play an important role in the development of education. Great attention should be paid to the training of teachers. A good teacher can influence two or three generations. At this year’s NVK conference, I will therefore submit a proposal to increase the qualifications of young teachers.”
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