 Can improvements in teacher quality reduce the cognitive gap between urban and rural students in China?Lei Zheng, Xiang Qi and Chongjiu Zhang International Journal of Educational Development, 2023, vol. 100, issue C Abstract: The urban-rural educational gap is a pressing issue for many countries, including China. Rural students have access to fewer educational resources and have less qualified teachers. Enhancing the quality of rural teachers is being prioritized by the Chinese government in its efforts to advance rural education. Using data from the China Education Panel Survey, we examine the impact of teacher quality on the cognitive gap between rural and urban students in China. We find that, first, the quality of teachers, as measured by academic qualifications and professional titles, significantly affects students' cognitive achievements. Second, middle and high achievers benefit more than their other peers from highly qualified teachers. Third, urban-rural discrepancy in teacher quality accounts for 9.06% of the cognitive gap on average. Our findings highlight the critical role of teacher quality in promoting educational equity and the importance of recruiting high-quality teachers for rural schools. Keywords: Teacher quality; Cognitive achievement; Urban-rural educational disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:100:y:2023:i:c:s0738059323000573 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2023.102781 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Educational Development is currently edited by Stephen P Heyneman More articles in International Journal of Educational Development from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.