Teachers in town offer lifeline to rural schools

However, when her elder child reached primary school age in 2015, she decided to move back to the village, and is happy she did so.

"The teachers in the villages are as good as those in the town now, so there is no need for me to continue renting an apartment there," she said.

Wang Yaping added that more villagers are returning from the town with their children as the quality and number of rural teachers rise.

Longcheng, the most remote of the 17 towns in the county, used to lag behind in education, but still ranked sixth for student performance in middle school entrance exams this year.

Wang Xusheng, the educational park president, said the severe lack of teachers has badly affected many rural schools.

It is not unusual for a teacher to provide instruction on a number of subjects for pupils in different grades. At Shanwang village school, the largest of the 12 to which the teachers travel, five are responsible for classes for 70 students from four grades.

Nine-year free compulsory schooling from elementary to middle school started in rural areas in the west of the country in 2006 before being introduced nationwide two years later. Tuition, which used to be a headache for rural families, is no longer a problem in many cases.