A Chinese Teacher's Weekly 20 Classes and the Shortage Behind Them

In late August 2026, a county in Liangshan, a mountainous part of Sichuan province in southwest China, held its autumn education meeting. According to accounts shared widely on Chinese social platforms, teachers whose classes had scored below a set average were called to the stage and photographed beside a large banner reading “shame.” Some teachers reportedly cried while reading self-criticisms; others were said to have drunk that evening to cope. Local authorities later apologized, acknowledging the treatment was disrespectful. The promised investigation into who organized it has still not produced a public result nearly 50 days on.

The story resonated far beyond Liangshan because it touched a nerve familiar to families across China: what happens when pressure to raise test scores lands on teachers who are already stretched thin. In the same online discussions, rural teachers described working weeks of around 20 class periods, with teachers at small village schools covering several subjects at once because there simply is not enough staff to go around.

Liangshan itself is a useful backdrop. It is one of China’s poorer prefectures, home to a large Yi ethnic minority population, with villages scattered across steep terrain. Distance and thin staffing mean teachers there often do more than teach. They supervise boarding students, handle paperwork, and act as counselors for children whose parents work in distant cities. When a school is short-handed, the timetable bends around whoever is available.

Urban teachers face a different version of the same squeeze. In county-level high schools, teachers are evaluated not just on how many students pass the university entrance exam, but on how many reach elite cutoffs or score above a benchmark like 600 out of 750. Those numbers feed into school rankings, which feed into enrollment, which feeds into budgets. The result is a chain of targets that ends at a single classroom.

The public debate after the Liangshan incident split along predictable lines. Some argued that accountability is necessary and that low-performing schools need pressure to improve. Others asked a simpler question: can an exhausted, anxious teacher produce calm, curious students? A phrase from one widely shared post summed up the mood — how do you teach sunny children when the teacher is not happy?

There is also a practical dimension that rarely makes headlines. China has invested heavily in rural education over the past two decades, building dormitories, wiring classrooms, and subsidizing meals. But buildings do not teach. Recruitment and retention in remote areas remain difficult because salaries, housing, and career prospects lag behind those in cities, and teachers who do arrive often leave within a few years.

At the same time, enrollment patterns are shifting. Birth rates have fallen, and some rural schools are consolidating or closing as families move to towns. That creates a strange mix: some schools with too few teachers, others with too few students, and a system still organized around exam rankings that were designed for a different era.

The Liangshan banner may end up remembered less for what it revealed about one county than for what it crystallized nationally. Teachers, parents, and students all recognize the arithmetic. More classes, fewer colleagues, and higher stakes do not add up to better learning. Until the investigation is published and staffing is addressed, the conversation is likely to keep returning to the same question: who is actually being graded?