Run a good high school that the people are satisfied with.

■ Major Typical Reports of Pioneers in Educational Reform

Walk 10 kilometers northwest from the main city of Tongzhou District, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province, and cross the lush farmland from the country road, and you will see a high school-Xiting High School. On the taxi to the school, the driver told the reporter that the child should work a little harder to get into this school. "There is nothing wrong with the last one." This rural high school is simple and orderly, surrounded by villages, but it has a great reputation and good reputation in the local area.

In Nantong, every time the college entrance examination is over, the people will habitually wait for the good news. Like Xiting Middle School, 40 county high schools have supported the reputation of "Jiangsu for national education and Nantong for Jiangsu education" and the reputation of "the hometown of education" in Nantong.

Over the years, Nantong has always been committed to promoting the overall coordinated development of ordinary senior high schools in counties and urban areas, strengthening policy design, optimizing education governance, strengthening the responsibility of city and county governments to guarantee, optimizing the social environment for the development of counties, striving to run every county in the region well, promoting the development of high-quality characteristics, enabling counties and counties to have more than one good high school that people are satisfied with, and allowing students to enjoy high-quality high school education with high-quality characteristics locally, thus forming a good ecology of "each county has its own beauty, beauty and beauty".

Educators run schools and let professionals do professional things.

Haian Middle School, Qidong Middle School, rugao middle school, Haimen Middle School, Rudong Middle School … Nantong has a long list of national famous high schools, but there are not many so-called "online celebrity" principals flying all over the place.

What is the reason for it In 2022, Cheng Bin, director of Nantong Education Bureau, hit the nail on the head at the general high school education work conference: Nantong advocated educators to run schools, not social activists to run schools.

At present, there are 48 ordinary high schools in the city, including 40 county high schools, accounting for 83.33%, and most of them have been four-star high schools. The quality of running a four-star high school recognized by Jiangsu is very high. In the eyes of local people, so many good high schools mean that "children can have more opportunities to go to colleges and universities", but the principals of these high-quality high schools rarely show their faces in major forums across the country.

In Cheng Bin’s view, the key to the governance of county ordinary high schools lies in the principal, and "the principal should take the school as his home", "sit still", manage the team well, bring the team well and run the school well; We should "grasp accurately", focus on curriculum, focus on classroom and focus on curriculum reform; We should "rush ahead" and be the leader of teachers and students’ thoughts, personality and teaching in the whole school.

This idea of "educators running schools" is deeply rooted in Nantong, especially with the strong support of the municipal party Committee and the municipal government. At the administrative level, most county principals in Nantong are at the director level, at the same level as the county party secretary, and they are all "city management cadres" appointed by the organization department of the municipal party Committee.

However, in the selection of principals, Nantong has always selected comrades who are proficient in business, good at management and recognized by the masses as principals and secretaries.

This is inseparable from the profound understanding of education by local party committees and governments at all levels-professional people do professional things. Successive leaders of the municipal party committee and municipal government have said that Nantong is the hometown of education and has a fine tradition of respecting education. Zhang Jian’s concept of "father education and mother industry" has always been the source of strength for Nantong’s local development.

Reflected in the running of county high schools, party committees and governments at all levels are committed to running "real schools" and fully support "educators" to run schools well. According to statistics, the financial input of ordinary senior high schools in Nantong counties has been increasing continuously, with an annual increase of more than 15% in the past three years, and the average public budget for education has reached 35,333 yuan.

Every year, the secretary of Nantong Municipal Party Committee and the mayor will specially arrange time to have a discussion with the representatives of high school principals. He Yijun, secretary of Rugao Municipal Party Committee, visited the high school for many times to coordinate and support the development of the school and express condolences to teachers and students. The Baipu Town Government, where Baipu High School is located in this city, distributed 1.3 million yuan for the high-quality development award of education for the school. Hai ‘an Municipal Government has invested 33 million yuan to build a gymnasium and other facilities for Qutang Senior High School in the past three years. Mayor Tan Zhen made it clear to the principal: "The local government that spends money will solve it. You are the principal, go into battle lightly and pay attention to teaching! "

"In Nantong, leaders at all levels have reached a very high level of understanding of education, especially the governance of county-level ordinary high schools." Regarding this phenomenon, Zhu Quanzhong, deputy director of Nantong Education Bureau, said that party committees and governments at all levels have deeply realized that the governance of county high schools has unusual political significance, pointing to common prosperity and being closely linked with rural revitalization. On the other hand, the development source of county economy is in the countryside. "The collapse of rural education often means the decline of rural economy, and the schools in rural areas will be prosperous around them."

Strictly control students’ "entry and exit" and put an end to pinching enrollment.

When the principals of Nantong go out to communicate with the outside world, they will always reveal a detail that surprises the audience: since the 1980s, Nantong has insisted on enrolling students within counties, and it is forbidden to enroll students across regions, and it is forbidden to recruit students from high-quality high schools in urban areas to counties (cities, districts).

Territorial enrollment is Nantong’s first move to ensure the quality of county high schools. In Zhu Quanzhong’s view, "this policy is one of the cores of maintaining competitiveness in Nantong regional counties and the basis for Nantong to promote the development of ordinary high schools in counties".

Zhu Quanzhong introduced that in the compulsory education stage, Nantong schools strictly enrolled students by region, and were not allowed to select students from different regions, so as to "protect the seedlings" for the senior middle school. At the same time, the county middle school students were strictly "in and out of the customs", and abnormal transfer was strictly examined, and supervision was extended to the compulsory education stage, and the system guarantee of "territorial enrollment" was established.

Nantong is bordered by the Yellow Sea in the east and the Yangtze River in the south, and is invited by lights from Shanghai and Suzhou. It has a vibrant economy and frequent population movements in generate. However, the reporter found in the interview that the concept of balanced development for a long time has kept the students in all counties (cities, districts) and junior high schools and primary schools basically stable. Nantong people rarely have the habit of running from the countryside to the city when they go to school, and many township schools are just as lively.

Grasping the source of students, Nantong’s county-level ordinary high school governance also has the corresponding second measure-to protect the teaching staff. "Teachers are the’ first resource’ for sustained and high-quality development in the county." Zhu Quanzhong introduced that in the long-term educational exploration and practice, Nantong has strictly regulated the cross-regional flow of teachers to guide schools around the country to focus on their own team building, and a team of teachers with "upright style, good teaching and retention" has been formed in all counties.

In his view, the benefits are obvious: maintaining the educational ecology of the whole city and giving the most basic guarantee for the development of high schools in all counties, the management direction of the school can remain unchanged for a long time, from "grasping students and teachers" to focusing on education.

At the same time, at the municipal level, Nantong has also integrated resources and established a "turnover pool" with a total of 3,980 municipal teachers to realize the dynamic management of teacher allocation. In all counties (cities, districts), the ratio of students to teachers in general high schools is appropriately optimized, and some counties (districts) even reach 8: 1. Local party committees and governments take the initiative to innovate mechanisms and increase investment to attract outstanding talents to teach in counties. The Education Steering Committee of the municipal government dynamically monitors the allocation of teachers around the country, and sends them to all localities in the form of "notification" or "reminder letter" to promote mutual learning and adequate allocation of teachers in counties. The "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Tongzhou Education" issued by Tongzhou District in 2022 also clarified that four-star ordinary high schools can recruit outstanding teachers independently, and schools can directly interview and sign contracts according to regulations.

Managing students well and then standardizing the construction of excellent teachers have laid the foundation for the development of ordinary high schools in Nantong county and created a commendable educational phenomenon: there has never been a problem of "one school coming out and a group of schools falling down" in Nantong.

"There is no market in Nantong for the practice of smashing teachers and then smashing students." Cheng Bin said that when the quality of education and teaching in all schools has reached a high level, and the people no longer worry about choosing a school, good students and good teachers will naturally "relocate", and the school’s own development and the quality of students will be virtuous, thus achieving a real educational balance. "This is the root cause of the’ crowding phenomenon’ in Nantong county high schools."

Fine management, find a suitable development path for each high school.

Qutang Senior High School is located in Qutang Town, the westernmost part of Hai ‘an City. This 70-year-old school has trained many academicians and entrepreneurs. In the past 10 years, with the advancement of urbanization, the local population has become less and less, but none of the teachers in this rural high school have left their jobs, and the ranks of people are very stable.

"We have made a lot of achievements in running schools these years, and there is really no special trick. As a rural school, the most fundamental thing is to continue the school culture." Gu Qinghua, president of Qutang Senior High School, said that from the late 1980s to the present, the school has always emphasized service and tried every means to create good working conditions for teachers. "The overall style is unpretentious and down-to-earth, and the style of study, teaching style and school spirit are very positive."

Similar to Qutang High School, during the interview in Nantong, the reporter found that the campus governance of county high schools has obvious characteristics. "Low-key and pragmatic" fully condensed the connotation of high quality of Nantong county high schools: low-key management education, not following the trend, keeping normal, insisting on making simple things not simple and ordinary things extraordinary.

This kind of "low-key and pragmatic" contains the secret of Nantong high school’s high-quality development-refined management. Nantong educators once had a saying that shocked the whole country: sweeping the floor should also be the first in the country! This sentence comes from the late Yao Zhiping, the "civilian principal" of Bencha Middle School. Under his leadership, this remote rural high school has made brilliant achievements in running schools. This sentence is precisely the refined campus governance of Nantong county high schools. Its core essence is: to find a suitable development path for each high school and pay attention to the development of each student.

"Conventional management forms a plateau, and exquisite management forms a peak." Liu Yonghong, the headmaster of Baipu Middle School, told the reporter that there is no secret behind the school performance. The key lies in the implementation of daily management. The goal and pursuit of running a school must be consistently implemented in all levels of the class. "When a class only focuses on students’ learning, it will be finished. It is unscientific and irregular to repeat and squeeze in time. "

"The quality of teaching is managed." Cheng Bin said that the essence of school management lies in the effective integration of various resources such as education, teaching, scientific research, logistics, teachers and students and external factors, and the construction of a "five-in-one" whole-process management model. "County high schools in Nantong have been focusing on quality for survival and development for decades, and the level of refinement, science and institutionalization has been greatly improved.

In order to provide high-quality education for every student, all county high schools in Nantong implement hierarchical teaching according to students’ needs and class characteristics, and implement two-track system or three-track system when choosing classes to improve the pertinence of teaching. Schools set up special files for students, and hand over files step by step with the progress of students, so as to provide more suitable help to students. At the same time, the management mechanism of grade department has been established in all counties in Nantong, and the principals in charge are in charge of both grades and grades, realizing "line-surface integration and linkage" and improving management efficiency.

In Xiting Middle School in Tongzhou District, the school has arranged dormitories for all teachers. Half of the teachers live in the school all the year round. The school carefully arranges the "guidance and care worksheet", and the school-level leaders lead the team every day. From students entering the school in the morning to going to bed at night, every time period and every regional point is guarded by teachers.

"Fine management is also reflected in not demanding uniformity and not mentioning patterning. Different disciplines, different periods and different students have different strategies. Everything starts from reality. " Dong Yuhua, the principal of Hai ‘an Middle School, said that it is impossible to have long-term high quality by grasping teaching and talking about scores. In his view, "how high the peak is, how solid the foundation must be". The reason why the school is so evaluated by the society lies in that people in the sea have always adhered to professional common sense, the routine of education and the normality of life.

Xu Weijun is the vice president in charge of teaching in Matang Middle School in Rudong County, and he has been sinking directly into the grade group. He introduced that in the grade group, we should grasp three lines-the team of the class teacher, the team of the preparation team leader and the student team. "To what extent is the management fine? Every time we finish the exam, we have to deal with small points at the first time and then give feedback to each teacher. The class teacher should call the subject teachers to open an analysis meeting, and each student’s recent state and how to improve must be clear. "

Behind these meticulous practices, we are adhering to the concept of following the teaching law and the growth law of students. In Dong Yuhua’s words, running a school should be determined, management should not be tossed, teachers should have autonomy in teaching, and children should have a sense of happiness in reading. "We are convinced that any words and deeds that deviate from the law of education and the law of human development, even if we get more flowers and applause, are meaningless."

"To achieve high-quality development in the county, the optimization of external education ecology is the external cause, and the potential tapping of school internal management is the internal cause." Cheng Bin concluded that innovation and practice, fine management and iterative upgrading of management system in the process of promoting the high-quality development of schools in all counties have presented an institutional adaptation ecology of "flexibility and integrity".

China Education News, 1st edition, July 11th, 2023.