"The grape valley is really a good place! Let’s follow the author to feel the hospitality of the people in Xinjiang! " Recently, the second teaching competition for young teachers in Xihu Primary School and Dongyue Temple School in Hanshou County, Hunan Province was held in the recording and broadcasting room of Xihu Primary School. This is the first time that the two schools have launched a teaching competition through the network joint school platform since they started running schools in groups.

"As the main school of the network joint school and the high-quality school assisted by pairing, we have formulated the’ four-part’ plan for jointly running schools, hoping to promote the professional growth of teachers through new curriculum standard training, mentoring, national defense education theme class meetings and joint teaching competitions." Zhu Zhiqiang, principal of West Lake Primary School, said.

Hanshou County is located in the northwest of Hunan Province, near Dongting Lake, with developed water system and convenient transportation. In 2021, considering the problems of declining birth rate, obviously enhanced urbanization trend, and difficulty in improving the quality of education and teaching, Hanshou County Party Committee and county government decided to merge 13 small-scale rural schools with less than 100 students in 2022, and at the same time merge the junior middle schools of Dongyuemiao Middle School and Yanzui Middle School into Furong School, and the junior middle school of Potou Middle School into Duck Harbor Middle School, and the original school was changed into a complete primary school.

"It is not the goal to merge schools. It is our goal to achieve high-quality and balanced development of education by optimizing the layout and run every school at home." Xu Zheng, secretary of the Party Committee and director of Hanshou County Education Bureau, said.

In 2023, Hanshou County made an innovative move by introducing China Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Mobile with a total investment of about 35 million yuan in the mode of "resources for construction", building 780 new multimedia classrooms, and providing all primary and secondary schools with interconnected recording and broadcasting rooms, realizing "quality resources for all classes" and "full coverage of network joint schools", and developing a fully connected online teaching and research platform for the construction and application of "three classrooms". In the autumn semester, the county carried out the pilot work of group-based school-running reform, selected 15 primary and secondary schools to carry out pairing assistance, and conducted "double checks" and process assessment on the personnel selected by aid schools and recipient schools.

"The model of" network joint school+group school running "has broken the inter-school barrier and achieved academic integration. School teachers can communicate online and interact offline, and quality educational resources have really come alive." Liu Lifei, member of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of Hanshou County Education Bureau, said.

What is commendable is that under the guidance of the goal of "great rectification, great reform and great quality improvement" in Hanshou County’s education, primary and secondary schools in the county, especially small-scale rural schools and remote schools in towns and villages, have made their own efforts and explored on their own, and the situation of "one school with one specialty" has initially taken shape.

Yanzui School introduced social education resources and set up 14 clubs including Taekwondo, Badminton, Football, Physical Fitness and Basketball. Relying on the resource advantages of the revolutionary ancestor Shuai Mengqi’s former residence, Potou School defined the core of patriotism education and integrated the red gene into the school curriculum. Duck Harbor Middle School is committed to "strengthening the school with high quality", refining the class management experience of "national excellent teacher" Xu Xiaoli, and implementing the mode of "group cooperation+hierarchical counseling" in the whole school. "Group cooperation not only improves my learning efficiency, but also exercises my ability of organization and coordination, making my campus life more meaningful." Xiao Ziting, a ninth-grade student at Duck Harbor Middle School, said.

"We will stick to’ a blueprint to the end’, further optimize the county’s education layout, further deepen network joint schools and group schools, and truly make the vision of’ being good at school, being eager to learn and learning well’ shine into reality." Xu Zheng said.

China Education News, 3rd edition, November 17th, 2023.

Author: correspondent Ren Jingjing Our reporter Yang Xiye