Incentive Effects Analysis on Primary and Secondary Teacher Incentive Policies in China

In recent years, many policies issued by central and local governments for primary and secondary school teachers in China are closely related to the incentive problems in their work. Based on the policy texts and empirical studies about teachers’ incentive, this paper discusses the incentive effects of teacher incentive policies. The outlines of this study are as follows: 1.Teacher incentive policies; 2. The incentive methods of teacher incentive policies; 3. Incentive effects of teacher incentive policies; 4. Teachers’ workloads and the effects of teacher incentive policies; and 5. Suggestions on teacher incentive policies.


A Set of Incentive Policies for Primary and Secondary School Teachers
In January 2018, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council issued an official statement, "The Opinions on Further Reform of Teachers" Qualifications in the New Era". This statement, said to be "the first milestone special policy of teachers cultivation issued by the CPC Central Committee since the founding of the People"s Republic of China (PRC) ", aims to foster high-quality, specialized and innovative teachers. In order to achieve this goal, it noted "deepen reform of the professional title and assessment system for primary and secondary school teachers" and "strengthen pos-employment management and stimulate teachers" work vitality". This shows that it is critically important to motivate primary and secondary school teachers to improve their quality.
In reviewing the relevant policy texts for primary and secondary school teachers in recent years, we found that in these texts, the keywords, such as "incentive", "motivate" and "arouse…motivation", frequently appeared; Moreover, there were an increasing number of such keywords in policies issued in recent years. Since this kind of policies usually focus on teacher incentives, especially how to stimulate and inspire teachers' enthusiasm, we deemed such educational policies as teacher incentive policies. Here are a few examples in Table 1.
"Give full play to the incentive and guiding role of performance-based pay... in the distribution of income, according to the assessment results, teachers should receive "more pay for more work" and "excellent rewards for excellent performance", especially for front-line teachers, backbone teachers and other educators who have made outstanding achievements."

Guidelines on Deepening Reform of the Professional Title System for Primary and Secondary School Teachers in 2015
"Deepening reform of the professional title system for primary and secondary school teachers is of great significance to strengthen teachers" qualifications, inspire them to teach, and attract and retain outstanding talents who will continue teaching for a long time and a lifetime."

MOE Opinions on Further Improving the Work of Homeroom Teachers (Headteacher) at Primary and Secondary Schools in 2006
"There is an urgent need to introduce more effective policies to ensure and encourage primary and secondary school teachers to be willing to be homeroom teachers and to do their jobs well."

Guidelines on Vigorously Promoting Reform of Teacher Education Curriculum in 2011
In order to ensure the implementation of the standards of teacher education curriculum, the eighth regulation of this policy stated that "foster high-quality teachers.  (2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020) in 2015 In order to "first achieve balanced performance among compulsory schools in the same county or district ", this policy put forward the system in which principals and teachers taking turns to serve in other schools. Article four specially required "establishing and improving the incentive and guaranteeing mechanism associated to the system", and it would motivate principals and teachers by means of professional titles, excellence selection activities, promotions, welfare and treatments. Adhering to the principle that "reform mechanism, inspire vitality", "expand the supplement channels of rural teachers, encourage youth to serve in rural schools, open up channels for graduates and urban teachers to work at rural schools, and gradually form an incentive mechanism that "the closer to the primary level, the more difficult, the higher status and treatments", as well as the dynamic mechanism for the usage of rural teachers." The general office of MOE

Notice on Further Regulating School Registration Management of Primary and Secondary School Students & Measures for Handling Issues on School Registration Management of Primary and Secondary School Students in 2016
"strengthen the cultivation of school registration administrators", "fully mobilize their work enthusiasm, scientifically assess their workloads and give them more policy supports in professional title evaluations, performance evaluations and other relevant aspects."

Suggestions on Strengthening the Education Practice of Students Enrolled in Teacher Training Institutions in 2016
"establish and improve an incentive mechanism of tutors", "local administrative departments of education and primary and secondary schools should include the educational practice of guiding students enrolled in teacher training institutions into the scope of teacher performance assessment, as important evidence of teachers' awards and promotions, and as an important prerequisite for selecting special-class teachers and subject leaders." secondary school teachers, there are also some problems, such as homeroom teachers' work, teacher trainings, teacher job exchange and post rotation, school registration management, teacher education curriculum development, educational practice of students enrolled in teacher training institutions, and so on, all of which need to adopt certain incentive methods to stimulate teachers' work enthusiasm. Since the policies for primary and secondary school teachers mentioned above all involve the same policy theme "incentive", we summarize the related series of policies and call them as "a policy set". From the perspective of policy set, it is necessary to explore the relationship between two or more policies, especially the coordination between different policies.

The Incentive Methods of Teacher Incentive Policies
In the above teacher incentive policies, from the perspective of incentive methods, there are differences and similarities in different fields of teachers' work. On the one hand, teacher incentive policies about different fields adopt different incentive methods. For example, the performance-based pay policy is mainly based on incentive pay as an incentive means; Reform of the professional title system takes the promotion of the professional title levels as the incentive way; The teacher training policy mainly encourages teachers through the credit recognition of training hours and the connection with formal education, which can be said to take the degree and diploma as an incentive; Post rotation policies motivate teachers from the following aspects: the check and ratify of staffing, post setting, promotion of posts (professional titles), employment management, performance evaluations, teacher trainings, evaluations and commendations; The policy of homeroom teachers synthesizes series of incentives such as workloads, special allowances, commendations and promotions. An overview of these policies can be found in Table  2.

Guidelines on the Implementation of Performance-based Pay in Compulsory Education Schools in 2008
The pay system of "more pay for more work" and "excellent rewards for excellent performance".

Guidelines on Deepening Reform of the Professional Title System for Primary and Secondary School Teachers in 2015
The incentive is the promotion of professional title under the five-level unified professional title system.

Opinions on Further Improving the Work of Homeroom Teachers at Primary and Secondary Schools in 2006 & Provisions on the Work of Homeroom Teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools in 2009
Including performance-based pay, allowances, commendations and promotions: "The workloads of homeroom teachers shall be converted into their basic workloads according half of the standard teaching hours of the local teachers." "Pay more to homeroom teachers when distributing performance-based pay. Pay homeroom teacher extra allowances to the homeroom teachers who assume extra teaching hours." "Commend and reward regularly teachers who have been working as homeroom teachers for a long time or have made outstanding contributions to this post." "The selection of school leaders should give priority to excellent homeroom teachers who have been engaged in this work for a long time." Guidelines on Vigorously Promoting

Reform of Teacher Education Curriculum in 2011
Including employment: "foster high-quality teachers. Effective measures should be taken to attract and motivate high-quality teachers to undertake teaching tasks of educational courses. ... Famous teachers from kindergartens, primary and secondary schools shall be recruited as part-time teachers to teach teachers who attend trainings curriculum, accounting for at least 20% of the teachers of educational courses. To form a mechanism whereby teachers from universities and primary and secondary schools jointly guide students enrolled in teacher training institutions, and implement the Including qualification registration, employment, assessments and commendations: "Provincial educational administrative departments should explore the establishment of a mechanism for teachers to choose their own subjects and build a "menu, autonomous and open" platform for choosing subjects." "A credit bank for teacher trainings shall be established to realize mutual credit recognition of teacher trainings and formal education." "The training credits shall be regarded as a prerequisite for the regular registration of teacher qualifications, teacher assessments and employment of positions (professional titles)." "Clarify the total amount of credits, and regulate the proportion of credits for different levels of national, provincial, municipal, county and school trainings and independent research and study of teachers." "To formulate conversion method of the training hours and training credits, Trainings at Primary and Secondary Schools in 2016 should reflect differences in training levels and students' learning results, the higher level of training, the higher credit value. the better students' learning results, the higher credit value." "The system of differentiated recognition of training credits reflects quality of training credits and will greatly motivate teachers to participate in trainings." "Support higher learning institutions and teacher training institutions in establishing a linkage mechanism between teacher trainings and formal education through such means as linking courses and mutual recognition of credits." "Teacher training credits shall be earnestly taken as a prerequisite for the regular registration of teacher qualifications. Within the validity period of each registration, teachers shall complete the training credits prescribed by the provincial education administrative department in order to be qualified for registration. The teacher training credits shall be regarded as a requirement for teachers' professional titles, performance evaluations and promotions." Opinions on Establishing and Improving of a Long-Term Mechanism to strengthen the professional ethics of teachers at Primary and Secondary Schools in 2013 Including commendations: "highlighting the motivators for teachers' professional ethics, promoting the formation of an atmosphere of valuing and cultivating ethics. The awards for teachers" professional ethics should be included in the scope of teachers' and educators' awards." (2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020) in 2015

Opinions on Promoting Job Exchange and Post Rotation of Principals and Teachers of Compulsory Education Schools inside Counties (Districts) in 2014 & A Plan to Support the Work of Teachers in Rural Areas
Including "the check and ratify of staffing, post setting, promotion of posts (professional titles), employment management, performance evaluations, teacher trainings, evaluations and commendations": "unify the standards of staffing in urban and rural primary and secondary schools." "actively explore ways to set up a number of posts for senior teachers at primary and secondary schools in rural areas and in weak schools, and gradually increase the proportion of middle and senior teachers at rural schools." "Teachers' working experience of teaching for more than one year in rural schools and weak schools should be regarded as a prerequisite for applying for senior teachers' posts (professional titles) and special teachers. Teachers who have been teaching at rural schools for more than 3 years (including urban teachers with experience of job exchange and volunteer teaching), have achieved prominent performance and met specific evaluation criteria shall be given priority in evaluations and employment on equal conditions. Teachers who exchange and teach at new schools shall be appointed at different levels according to their original positions and posts. Priority of principals appointment shall be given to the teachers with experience in management positions at rural or weak schools." "… shall receive more policy supports in the distribution of performancebased pay and be given priority to using teachers" temporary accommodations." "strengthen targeted trainings for principals and teachers who engage in job exchange or post rotation, integrate it into training plans and projects for principals and teachers at all levels, and give priority to it." "Principals and teachers who participate in job exchange and post rotation and make significant contributions should be given more supports in all commendations and be awarded according to relevant national provisions."

Notice on Further Regulating School Registration Management of Primary and Secondary School Students & Measures for Handling Issues on School Registration Management of Primary and Secondary School Students in 2016
Including cultivation, promotions of posts (professional titles) and performance evaluations: "strengthen the cultivation of school registration administrators", "fully mobilize their work enthusiasm, scientifically assess their workloads and give them more policy supports in professional title evaluations, performance evaluations and other relevant aspects."

Suggestions on Strengthening the Education Practice of Students Enrolled in Teacher Training Institutions in 2016
Including performance evaluations, commendations and promotions of posts (professional titles): "local administrative departments of education and primary and secondary schools should include the educational practice of guiding students enrolled in teacher training institutions into the scope of teacher performance assessment, as important evidence of teachers' awards and promotions, and as an important prerequisite for selecting special-class teachers and subject leaders." On the other hand, throughout the series of policies above, the similarity is that the incentive methods above are mainly extrinsic, including various forms of incentives, such as salary, professional titles, staffing, temporary accommodations, different subsidies, commendations and rewards, promotions, mutual credit recognition of teacher trainings and formal education, differentiated recognition of training credits, and linkage mechanism between teacher trainings and formal education; Obviously, in the existing incentive methods, there is a lack of intrinsic motivations for teachers' work, such as students' educational attainment, the harmonious relationship between teachers and school administrators, campus culture and working atmosphere, and so on. Due to the deep involvement of the almighty administration in the internal management of the school, when designing policies, merely focusing on extrinsic motivations but ignoring intrinsic motivations will result in a series of consequences that it is easier to arouse teachers' external motivations, and ignore and squeeze their internal motivations (Ryan and Deci, 2000).
In addition, in terms of specific teacher policies, in order to guarantee the realization of policy objectives, there are not only incentive methods but also lots of provisions, requirements and prerequisites as restrictions on teachers' behaviors. For example, the training credits should be taken as a prerequisite for teacher qualification registrations, teacher assessments and job (professional title) appointments. Another example is the policy related to job exchange and post rotation of principals and teachers, which requires that teachers' working experience of teaching for more than one year at rural schools and weak schools should be regarded as a prerequisite for applying for senior teachers' posts (professional titles) and special teachers.

The Effects of Teacher Incentive Policies
The observations in the above policies raise several questions. First, why are so many incentives for teachers designed and implemented in a wide range of teachers' work? What do such policies reflect about in-service teachers' work attitudes? Do lots of teachers at primary and secondary schools have a negative attitude toward most of their work and therefore need to be constantly motivated to improve their performance, especially those continuously new-issued policies? Second, are the incentive methods of previous policies effective? What are their actual impacts? Have they achieved the goals they set out to achieve? Have they helped solve problems of teachers' work enthusiasm? Or to what extent has it alleviated the problem of teachers' lack of enthusiasm in work? Third, do the policies aimed at teachers work together in harmony. In other words, is there the joint force of these policies? How do they interact? Finally, in the future formulation and top-level design of teacher incentive policies, what useful inspirations can be obtained from the effect evaluations of current policies? In particular, how to design incentive methods from the perspective of joint force of policies to provide more effective improvements in certain policy-making processes?
With the problems above in our minds, we synthetically reviewed the previous scientific research projects on teacher incentive policies. In national education sciences planning projects, although some certain teacher incentive policies have received an increased amount of attention, a research about the joint force of these policies is lacking (Rasheed et al., 2016). Recent scientific research projects on teacher incentive policies appeared in different periods, such as some on performance-based pay policy from 2010 to 2011 and some on job exchange policy after 2014, all of which followed these policies' respective release. In terms of the research contents, the recent projects mainly studied vertical incentive, security mechanism, and rural teacher policies. In addition, not all of teacher policies have their corresponding research projects, such as homeroom teacher policy and professional title policy. The details are reported in Table 3.  Next, we consulted China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), a database in china. There were 173 literatures with "teacher incentives at primary and secondary schools" as the search term, and 28 literatures with "teacher incentive policies at primary and secondary schools" as the search term, which are summarized in Table 4.  (Fan and Fu, 2011) Primary and secondary school teachers in 32 counties in 4 provinces in central China 20.4% and 40.7% of teachers thought performance-based pay reform "significantly improved" and "improved" their work enthusiasm, respectively. (Ning, 2015) Compulsory education school teachers in P district in Shanghai Teachers' recognition was generally not high and there were not significant changes in teachers' work enthusiasm and behaviors, and even the negative effects of incentive appeared. (Wang, 2015) Not clear Teachers who chose "improve a lot" and "improve a little" accounted for 4.2% and 27.5% respectively, while teachers who chose "improve as before" accounted for 56.0%.  9183 primary and secondary school teachers in 40 cities in 16 provinces Although most teachers believe that the performance-based pay policy has a positive impact in improving teachers' teaching behaviors to some extent, the incentive effect of this policy is not very significant. (Xie, 2016) 2575 teachers in 12 counties in 3 provinces surveyed by CCNU "Extremely dissatisfied," "dissatisfied" and "uncertain" accounted for 21.9%, 37.3% and 23%, respectively. (Wu, 2016) Teachers in 2 high schools in Yi Bin city The performance-based pay policy has not realized the original intention of stimulating teachers to work actively. (Hu and Yan, 2017;Yan, 2017;Ye, 2016) 1000 principals and teachers in Shang Hai, An Hui and He Nan Performance-based pay policy has implementation bias Homeroom teacher policy (Zhu, 2011) Teachers' law and Work regulations for homeroom teachers at primary and secondary schools Incentives have not been effectively implemented in practice (Xue and Li, 2017) The policy itself Due to the limitation of staffing funded by public finance, it is difficult to meet the requirement of "half of workloads" in homeroom teacher policy. The allowances of homeroom teachers were adjusted to 30% of new teachers' salaries and required another source of finance. (Li J. et al., 2017) 3032 primary and secondary school homeroom teachers in 23 counties in 16 provinces 60% of teachers were not willing to take this position Teacher job exchange policy (Li J. et al., 2017) 213 compulsory education school teachers in Z county, M city, L province There were problems in the implementation of the policy, such as "failure to enforce", "poor educational performance" and "difficult to manage", which led to the decline of teachers' willingness to exchange job between urban and rural schools. Teacher training policy (Li Y., 2016) Teachers at primary and secondary schools in Yan Ji city 57% of teachers were not positive about teacher trainings. (Xue and Chen, 2012) 9026 teachers and 298 trainers in 9 provinces The quality of teacher trainings was not optimistic, and less attention was paid to the long-term impact of trainings on their behavior improvement. The director of the department of teachers' work of the MOE answered questions from media on the Guideline on Vigorously Promoting the Credit

Management of Teacher Trainings at Primary and Secondary Schools in 2016
The implementation of management of credits of teacher trainings "At present, the simple conversion of training hours and credits in many regions does not reflect the differences in training levels and learning results, which cannot motivate teachers to participate in trainings and learn." "The training credit management was not adequate, and the results were not effectively applied, failing to play the incentive role".
According to these research results, although some studies thought there were significant incentive effects, the overall effect of every teacher incentive policy was not satisfactory. Some policies, such as performance-based pay policy, homeroom teacher policy and teacher post rotation policy, had non-ideal incentive effects due to the problems in the implementation. In addition, present studies didn't pay attention to the incentive effects of some policies, such as reform of teacher education curriculum, teachers' professional ethics, school registration management, education practice of students enrolled in teacher training institutions, and so on.
Moreover, throughout the literature on teacher incentive policies, our findings are as follows: First, effect evaluations of present teacher incentive policies mainly focused on the specific policies and incentive mechanisms instead of the interaction between multiple policies or the joint force of policies; Second, the existing research rarely carried out a comprehensive evaluation of the policies with the theme of "incentive"; Furthermore, several teacher incentive policies still lacked of their corresponding effect evaluations; Finally, current studies on the effects of teacher policies tended to use relatively simple measures of teachers' motivation, rather than detailed, diverse and rich approaches.

Teachers' Workloads and the Effects of Teacher Incentive Policies
In fact, the central government has introduced a large number of teacher incentive policies, which involve many aspects, including performance-based pay, homeroom teachers, teacher education, teacher trainings, teacher job exchange, school registration management and education practice of students enrolled in teacher training institutions. In order to achieve the original goals, the incentives for in-service teachers should take their actual work attitudes into the consideration. So, what are their overall work attitudes? We can find an answer from the texts of a teacher policy issued by the central government. In December 2019, the general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council have published a Guideline to Reduce the Burden of Teachers at Primary and Secondary Schools, and Create a Good Environment for Education, pointing out some phenomena of overburdened work of in-service teachers in China. To be specific, "at present, the workloads of teachers, especially teachers at primary and secondary schools, are pretty heavy. Specifically, all kinds of supervisions, inspections, assessments and other items come up too often; All forms of research, statistics, information collections and other activities overlap, and even some are haphazard; Some local governments and departments often assign irrelevant tasks to teachers when carrying out work related to safety and stability, combating crime and eliminating evil, and cultivating and appraising outstanding performance." Besides, the details of teachers' heavy burden were mentioned in many subsequent issues of the overall planning and regulation. It led to the consequence that "it extremely disturbs normal teaching order at schools and imposes extra burden on teachers." "In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to impart the idea that their job is teaching and educating to teachers, effectively reduce unnecessary interferences to schools and teachers, return peace to schools and return time to teachers." Xiong and Jiang (2019) noticed that it was common for teachers to bear a heavy work burden based on the questionnaire survey of nearly 100,000 teachers at primary and secondary schools in the eastern, central and western regions in China. And the topic of lightening the burden on teachers has been around for more than a decade (Feng, 2003;Zhuo, 2003), and now, it has been a theme in a policy of the central government, which shows severance of this problem. Therefore, the design of a series of teacher incentive policies should consider the fact that teachers at primary and secondary schools have heavy workloads, such as lots of inspections, appraisals and assessments conducted by governments, social affairs, information collections, post rotations and so on. Obviously, due to the reality, it is difficult to ensure that the incentive methods that relevant policies referred to have an expected impact, which is also the reason why their effects are unsatisfactory.

Suggestions on Teacher Incentive Policies
Teacher incentive policies aim to improve in-service teachers' work attitude at primary and secondary schools over the country. Regarding the policy goals, the relevant policies make efforts to encourage teachers to better accomplish their teaching and educating and other aspects of work. As previously mentioned, the policy texts and studies above show that the effects of teacher incentive policies seem not to be satisfying, which could result from a failure to take into account the heavy workload of teachers.
Moreover, according to the extensive research presented above, future research could: (1) evaluate the effects of teacher incentive policies from the perspective of joint force of policies, (2) assess a range of policies based on an integration of incentives for teachers, (3) carry out researches on some teacher incentive policies that lack of relevant studies, (4) study the changes in teachers' enthusiasm by richer approaches in positive psychological.
Finally, in the design of present teachers' policies, extrinsic incentives are mainly employed, while intrinsic ones are ignored. In the future teacher incentive policies, it is sensible to design and arrange comprehensively to promote coordination between intrinsic and extrinsic incentives. And in the future implementation of the teacher incentive policies should be conducted in the context of the heavy workload of primary and secondary school teachers.