Exploring the Issues and Paths of Balanced Development of Teachers

from the Perspective of Funding for Teacher Training: Taking the

"National Training Program" as an Example

Mingfei Cao

Faculty of Economics, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China

Keywords: Educational Finance, Education and Training, Educational Development.

Abstract: Education and teacher training issues have received widespread attention, but there are still shortcomings.

This article takes the National Training Program as an example to study the problem of balanced development

of teachers. There are two main reasons for the different effects of implementing the "National Training Pro-

gram": First, the number of teachers in each province is different. Secondly, the economic development status

varies among provinces. This article argues that there are problems with teacher development, such as an

incomplete teacher training system, lack of targeted training content, difficulty in demonstrating the effec-

tiveness of teacher training, and low investment costs in teacher training. Based on this, this article proposes

the following suggestions: establish a complete and comprehensive teacher development system. Strengthen

the personalization and targeting of training content, and increase funding for teacher training; Enhance prac-

tical guidance to promote balanced education development.

1 INTRODUCTION

China implements the strategy of "rejuvenating the

country through science and technology" and

"strengthening the country through talents", and

education is indispensable for improving the ability

of scientific and technological innovation to achieve

self-reliance in science and technology, or for

cultivating and developing high-quality talents.

Education is the top priority of the country. China has

held the first National Conference on education since

the founding of the People's Republic of China, which

reflects the importance China attaches to education.

The development of education can not be separated

from the support of the government. Education

finance is the top priority of education development.

In 2012, the financial expenditure on education

accounted for more than 4% of GDP, which is the

beginning of the good development of China's

education. At the same time, China has actively

implemented various policies and plans, such as

carrying out compulsory education, relying mainly on

state financial allocations, and the system of raising

education funds through multiple channels to

promote the development of education. Gao once

mentioned the importance of teacher literacy to

education in his article. He proposed that teachers

should enhance their professional ability, build a

reasonable knowledge structure, and have strong

psychological quality, and illustrated the positive

impact of teachers with good teacher literacy on

students (Gao, 2018). It can be seen that teacher

training has a profound impact on the improvement

of education quality. Since 2010, China has started to

fully implement the "national training plan for

primary and secondary school teachers" (hereinafter

referred to as "national training plan"). Accordingly,

this paper aims to analyze the financial investment in

education in recent years and the level of education

development under the implementation of the

"national training plan", as well as the uneven capital

investment of the central government in various

provinces, and study the education development in

various regions since the implementation of the

"national training plan" and put forward suggestions

for optimization and improvement.

2 METHODS AND IDEAS

"National training plan" is a national training plan for

primary and secondary school teachers jointly

launched by the Ministry of Education and the

Ministry of Finance. It aims to improve the overall

Cao, M.

Exploring the Issues and Paths of Balanced Development of Teachers from the Perspective of Funding for Teacher Training: Taking the "National Training Program" as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0013977100004912

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development (IESD 2025), pages 205-209

ISBN: 978-989-758-779-5

205

quality of primary and secondary school teachers,

especially rural teachers, to improve the teaching

quality of primary and secondary schools and

promote the development of education. This paper

takes the "national training program" as an example

to analyze its development and problems.

This paper combines data analysis and case

analysis. The data in this paper are from the National

Bureau of Statistics of China and the Ministry of

Finance of the People's Republic of China. It shows

the financial expenditure on education in China, the

budget of the "national training plan" and the

investment of teacher trainers in corresponding

provinces. Based on these data, this paper discusses

the changes in the total amount of financial

investment in education in different years, the change

trend of the financial investment in the national

training plan in recent years, and the various reasons

for the different capital investments in each province

in the national training plan. In addition, combined

with case analysis, this paper explores the possible

problems in the implementation of the "national

training plan", such as teachers' reluctance to

participate in training, lack of pertinence in training

content, and difficulty in translating training results

into practice.

This paper discusses the significance of education

finance to education development from the

perspective of education finance investment. The

development of education leads to the important

position of teachers in education. The higher the

quality of teachers, the better the development of

students' all-round learning; This paper continues to

analyze the state's financial investment in teacher

training, as well as the allocation of the central

government's funds for teacher training in various

regions, and the development of education in various

regions since the implementation of the "national

training plan", and puts forward optimization

strategies.

3 SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION

OF "NATIONAL TRAINING

PLAN"

3.1 Overall Situation

China's national financial expenditure on education is

increasing as a whole, and education finance plays an

indispensable role in the high-quality development of

education. Since the founding of the new China, due

to the situation at that time, China's education level

has been seriously unbalanced, and the development

level of big cities is far higher than that of rural areas

and remote areas. At the same time, there are still

many problems such as a large illiterate population

and unequal distribution of schools. The state has

carried out drastic reforms, such as promoting the

organized takeover of private schools, rectifying

private schools, and establishing new primary

schools, to promote the realization of educational

equity. Increasing the financial support of the state

and vigorously developing education has laid a solid

foundation for a series of measures to vigorously

develop education in China (Suo, 2021). Since 2012,

the ratio of China's education fiscal expenditure to

GDP has been maintained at more than 4%, which is

a major milestone in China's education development.

However, the development of education cannot

stop here. China's education finance is still facing

problems such as insufficient provision of total

education finance and an unbalanced investment

structure of education finance, which need to be

further improved (He, 2020).

3.2 Overall and Regional Data

The capital investment of the "national training

program" is generally similar, but there are

differences between provinces.

On the whole, there is no big gap between the

national budget for the "national training program" as

a whole, and the investment in each province has been

flat in the past five years. The overall budget of the

"national training program" is around 220000 yuan.

At the same time, although there is a large gap

between provinces, the annual difference of each

province is small.

Specifically, Take Heilongjiang, Henan, and

Hainan as examples. The capital budget of the

"national training program" in Henan Province is

much higher than that in Heilongjiang and Hainan

provinces. It can be seen from Table 1 that the

proportion of capital investment in Henan's "national

training program" has been more than 10% for five

consecutive years, far exceeding that of other

provinces. The proportion of Heilongjiang and

Hainan regions is relatively small, floating around

2%.

IESD 2025 - International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development

206

Table 1: Proportion of national training plan for primary

and secondary school and kindergarten teachers in each

province (%).

Province 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Heilong

ian

2.29395

6044

2.46794

8718

2.64545

4545

2.28636

3636

2.28636

3636

Henan 10.8424

9084

11.2820

5128

11.35 11.8 11.8

Hainan 2.22985

348

2.13827

8388

2.03636

3636

1.86818

1818

1.86818

1818

(Note data source: Ministry of Finance of the People's

Republic of China)

From the perspective of the average teachers, the

average teachers in Henan, which accounted for more

funds in the "national training plan", were lower,

while the average teachers in Heilongjiang and

Hainan, which accounted for fewer funds in the

"national training plan", were much higher than those

in Henan. From the comparison between Table 2 and

Table 3, it can be seen that the divisions in Henan

Province are floating between 0.0076 and 0.0087.

While the divisions in Heilongjiang Province

fluctuated around 0.05, and those in Hainan Province

fluctuated between 0.118 and 0.124. The comparison

shows that although the capital budget of the

"national training plan" in Henan Province is large,

the situation of teachers is not optimistic.

Taking Heilongjiang, Henan, and Hainan as

examples, this paper analyzes the economic

development of the provinces that implement the

"national training plan". The gross domestic product

of Henan is much higher than that of Heilongjiang

and Hainan, indicating that the economic

development of Henan is better than that of

Heilongjiang and Hainan, so the cost of carrying out

activities related to the "national training plan" in

Henan is high.

Table 2: "National Training Plan" per province teacher av-

erage situation (10,000 yuan).

Province 2020 2021 2022 2023

Heilongji

0.052166

917

0.053818

655

0.050504

609

0.054950

961

Henan 0.008659

072

0.007931

417

0.007828

0.007619

731

Hainan 0.124007

577

0.119319

248

0.119607

088

0.118771

754

(Note data source: National Bureau of Statistics of China,

Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China)

Table 3: Number of full-time teachers in provinces imple-

menting the "National Training Plan" (number).

Province 2020 2021 2022 2023

Heilongjiang 233673 230775 228890 223290

Henan 1075173 1120859 1152268 1160146

Hainan 96607 101241 103840 106591

(Note data source: China National Bureau of Statistics)

To sum up, it can analyze why the central

government's capital investment in the provinces of

the "national training plan" is so different. There are

two main reasons: First, the number of teachers in

each province is different. Taking Henan as an

example, Henan has a large population and a large

number of teachers. The number of teachers in Henan

Province is about 11 times that in Hainan Province,

so the capital investment is relatively large to

maintain the average capital of teachers. On the

contrary, taking Hainan as an example, although the

capital investment is relatively small, the number of

teachers is also small, and the average number of

teachers is much higher than that in Henan Province.

Second, economic development is different. The cost

of training is different, so the cost of organizing

training is different. Therefore, the capital

distribution in regions with rapid economic

development is more, on the contrary, it is smaller

(Burns, 2023).

4 PROBLEMS IN TEACHER

TRAINING

According to the above data analysis and case

analysis, the existing problems of teacher training are

obtained.

4.1 System Dilemma

First, the number of teachers participating in teacher

training is small. In 2023, Heilongjiang's "national

training plan" trained more than 21000 teachers

(Heilongjiang Provincial Department of Education,

2023). According to Table 3, there were 223290

teachers in Heilongjiang in 2023. Nearly 200000

teachers did not participate in the training, which

shows that the number of teachers participating in the

teacher training is small and the full coverage has not

been achieved. Second, the existing teacher training

system is mainly based on Colleges and universities.

Although this model provides teachers with

opportunities for professional development to a

certain extent, it also exposes some structural defects.

Exploring the Issues and Paths of Balanced Development of Teachers from the Perspective of Funding for Teacher Training: Taking the

"National Training Program" as an Example

207

A complete county-level teacher training system has

not been formed, resulting in the phenomenon that

college experts cannot reach the grass-roots level and

grass-roots teachers lack training (Wang, 2018).

4.2 Content Dilemma

Zhouguangchun learned from the questionnaire that

teachers believed that the training content was mainly

to meet teachers' teaching needs and ethics training

content, which accounted for 68.9% of teachers'

teaching needs and 73.3% of teachers' ethics training,

while class management problems accounted for only

32.2%, much higher than the examination evaluation

(accounting for 20%) (Zhou, 2006). It shows that part

of the training content does not take into account the

real concerns and actual needs of teachers, and is lack

of pertinence.

Part of the training content is lack of pertinence

and can not accurately meet the needs of groups and

individuals at different levels (Wang, 2018). When

designing the training plan, the differences between

different groups of teachers may be ignored. Some

teachers need to carry out class management training,

some teachers need to carry out teaching-related

training, and so on. When designing the training plan,

they did not go deep into the grass-roots level of

teachers, resulting in the lack of pertinence of the

training content.

4.3 Achievement Dilemma

After training, it may be difficult for teachers to apply

the training results to actual teaching (Wang, 2018).

Teachers accept the ideal teaching in the training, but

the reality is complex and diverse, and there are many

deviations. The training is a mostly theoretical

explanation, lacking the establishment of practical

links. To sum up, it is difficult to apply the training

results in actual teaching.

4.4 Cost Dilemma

There may be a situation that the training input cost is

not enough to support the training to achieve the

expected effect so the expectation is not proportional

to the input (Wang, 2018). The cost of teacher

training includes many aspects, such as the hiring cost

of lecturers, transportation and accommodation costs,

etc. The accumulation of these costs may lead to the

overabundance of the total budget. The results and

benefits of teacher training are related to students in

addition to teachers themselves, which may lead to

the investment and effectiveness not being

proportional.

5 OPTIMIZATION STRATEGY

5.1 Establish a Complete and

Comprehensive Teacher

Development System

Colleges and universities actively organize experts to

go to the grass-roots level, communicate with grass-

roots teachers, understand the needs of grass-roots

teachers, and give grass-roots teachers more

opportunities to participate in training.

Xuchang College of Henan Province actively

carried out the activity of a "national training plan -

sending training to the county". The activity of

"sending training to the county" is a new project of

the "national training plan" of Xuchang College

issued by the Department of Education of Henan

Province, which aims to form an expert group to carry

out "sending training" activities in different counties

and districts, closely cooperate with teachers, solve

the key and difficult points encountered by teachers

in teaching, and carry out lectures and exchanges,

which is highly praised by everyone (Henan

Provincial Department of Education, 2013).

Establish a comprehensive teacher development

system led by colleges and universities and

dominated by counties (Wang, 2018). Ensure that

teachers can find their development path and

resources in this system, and constantly improve their

professional quality education, and teaching ability,

to promote the balanced development and quality

improvement of the whole education.

5.2 Strengthen the Personalization and

Pertinence of Training Content,

and Increase the Capital

Investment in Teacher Training

Use scientific and technological means to collect

information and design targeted training content.

Increase the capital investment in teacher training

optimize the structure of capital use, and implement

each capital use.

Henan Shangqiu Normal University takes many

measures at the same time. Before the training, it uses

questionnaires, telephone inquiries, and other forms

to solicit opinions, ask students about the problems

they want to understand and solve and carry out

IESD 2025 - International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development

208

targeted training (Henan Provincial Department of

Education, 2013).

By using artificial intelligence and big data, it

integrates the most concerned issues of different

levels of groups and individuals, carries out different

trainings for different groups, and designs targeted

training content (Fernández-Batanero, 2022). For

personalized projects, there should be personalized

project capital investment. Different projects need

different funds. Funds should be allocated according

to the needs of the project. There should be not only

high expectations but also investment that matches

the expectations. High costs should be used to

exchange high expectations.

5.3 Enhance Practical Guidance

Take the classic teaching cases as an example to

create real-scene teaching, close to the actual teaching

of teachers. Make the teachers participating in the

training understand the training content and skillfully

apply it to daily teaching.

"National Training Plan (2022)" trained 100 rural

key teachers in border counties of Heilongjiang

Province. Professor Zhengxudong was invited to give

lectures, leading the students to understand,

familiarize, apply, and explore the "three classes",

and boosting the high-quality development of basic

education in border areas of Heilongjiang Province

(Heilongjiang Provincial Department of Education,

2022). The training focuses on the "three classes",

which are mainly aimed at rural teachers and provide

specialized, shared, and open help.

Implement teacher training to help teachers grow

and develop. It not only explains the theoretical

knowledge but also leads teachers to further

familiarize and apply the knowledge through

practical guidance so that teachers can constantly try

and explore in practice. Stimulate teachers to actively

integrate the training contents into their daily teaching

work, and improve the training effect and teaching

quality (Wang, 2018).

6 CONCLUSION

Education is the foundation of the country, and

teachers are the source of education. In today's era,

China's steady march on the world stage is

inseparable from the wisdom of talents and the strong

drive of scientific and technological innovation.

Tracing back to the source, it will find that education

and teachers are indispensable. To further promote

talent construction and scientific and technological

progress, it should further increase financial

investment in education. At the same time, it should

pay attention to the improvement of teachers' quality.

It should not only pay attention to teachers'

professional knowledge quality but also pay attention

to teachers' management ability and the ability to use

professional knowledge. Carry out diversified teacher

training methods, establish an open teacher training

platform, and promote the high-quality development

of education and the realization of education equity.

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Exploring the Issues and Paths of Balanced Development of Teachers from the Perspective of Funding for Teacher Training: Taking the

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