Why don't young people want to be teachers?

Author: This station Release date: 2026-09-13

At the beginning of this year, a teacher teaching in a key Senior high school in Beijing complained to me about one thing. Senior high school freshmen concentrate on military training, and the head teacher should accompany them all the way. Due to the limited accommodation conditions in the camp, nearly ten female head teachers were arranged to live in the same room and sleep on the upper and lower bunks. During the day, follow the team, watch training, deal with all kinds of emergencies, and continue to guard the students at night. A few days down, her biggest feeling is: tired.

In the circle of teachers, "don't want to be a teacher in charge" is not a new topic. Some people expressed their wishes to the leaders long in advance, while others joked that "being a head teacher is not (position) going up, but blood pressure going up". Although these statements are joking, they also show the realistic pressure of the head teacher's position.

How busy is the teacher?

In addition to preparing lessons, attending classes, approving homework and participating in teaching and research like ordinary teachers, they have to get to school early, watch early reading, watch lunch break, deal with students' conflicts, pay attention to their psychological state, be responsible for safety management, fill in various information forms and application forms, organize class meetings, sports meetings, science and technology festivals and social practice, and face various problems among parents at any time, almost 24 hours a day.

The head teacher is not only a teacher, but also a psychological counselor, a person in charge of safety, an activity organizer and a home-school liaison. The national compulsory education quality monitoring in 2019 shows that,The average school time for class teachers in the fourth and eighth grades is 10.03 hours and 11.48 hours respectively., which is used for school management, inspection and assessment, social affairs, etc.The time of non-teaching work reaches 3.68 hours and 3.53 hours respectively. In a 2023 survey of class teachers in the early stages of their careers in Jing'an District, Shanghai, 11.65 per cent of respondents felt "extremely stressed" and 63.35 per cent felt "stressed".

It's not just "busy".

What many front-line teachers really mind is that the boundary of the head teacher's work is becoming more and more blurred. If the students' grades decline, they should find the head teacher; if there are conflicts between students, they should find the head teacher; if the child is in a bad mood, they should find the head teacher; if the parents are not satisfied with the school arrangement, the first contact is the head teacher. When something goes wrong, the head teacher is often the first to be held accountable, but the resources and authority that can really be controlled are very limited.

Some media have summed up this situation very vividly: "As soon as the responsibility is unlimited, the authority is tightened step by step."

More realistically, the extra effort does not always match the reward. The allowance standards for head teachers vary greatly from place to place, ranging from hundreds to thousands of yuan, and a large number of class management, student companionship and home-school communication are difficult to be accurately quantified. As a result, in the eyes of some young teachers, the head teacher has gradually become a "high-intensity, high-responsibility, high-risk" job.

The "China Teacher Development Report 2024" also takes the construction of the head teacher team as the core theme, points out that there are still problems in social status, role emotional experience, work input boundaries, etc., and proposes to improve the professional ecology of the head teacher from professional development, salary, title promotion and institutional environment.

Therefore, the discussion of "why young people are not willing to be class teachers" cannot simply be attributed to this generation of teachers "unwilling to bear hardships". When a position relies on responsibility and dedication to digest more and more extra affairs for a long time, no matter how strong the enthusiasm is, it may be slowly exhausted.

States have begun to respond to this problem. In 2025, the Ministry of Education will introduce relevant measures to further reduce the non-educational teaching burden of primary and secondary school teachers, requiring standardized supervision, inspection, evaluation and assessment, and improving the "white list" system for social affairs on campus. Before Teacher's Day in 2026, the Ministry of Education once again made it clear that unnecessary inspections, appraisals, and filling in forms should be truly reduced, "return tranquility to the campus and time to the teachers".

These policies ultimately point to a very simple problem:Which things should really be the responsibility of the head teacher and which should not?

If you want more outstanding young teachers to be willing to be head teachers, it is far from enough to mobilize and speak of feelings. The administrative affairs undertaken by the school should not be layered on the head teacher; the home-school boundary that should be clarified should not allow teachers to undertake all the pressure alone; for those head teachers who invest more time and energy, there should also be treatment that matches their responsibilities. And professional recognition.

Young people are not unwilling to give, just unwilling to overdraw indefinitely.What really makes the post of head teacher attractive again is not to require young teachers to bear hardships more, but to make this important job have boundaries, security and dignity.

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