China will celebrate the 38th Teachers' Day on September 10. The Ministry of Education held a press conference to review the achievements of the Chinese education workforce in the past 10 years.

Over the past decade, China's teaching workforce has improved in quality and quantity, said Ren Youqun, the director of the Department of Teacher Education of the Ministry of Education.

"The total number of full-time teachers in China grew 26 percent from 14.629 million in 2012 to 18.44 million in 2021. The quality and structure of teachers at all levels have been improved. The number of primary school teachers with a bachelor's degree or above increased from 32.6 percent a decade ago to 70.3 percent last year. More than 50 percent of teachers in vocational education are dual-qualified," Ren pointed out.

To improve the quality of teachers, the central government has invested 5.3 billion yuan (about $764.1 million) in the implementation of the plan to improve the quality of vocational college teachers and established 100 national teacher training bases and 102 enterprise practice bases.

At the press conference, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) also introduced supportive measures in education sector.  

Government spending on education as a percentage of GDP has remained above 4 percent for 10 consecutive years, making education the largest expenditure in the general public budget, according to Cai Changhua, deputy director of the Social Development Department of NDRC.

Work environment for teachers has been continuously improved, Cai noted. The NDRC has allocated 220 billion yuan from the central budget and supported the issuance of 340 billion yuan of special local government bonds, as part of the efforts to improve teaching, research and living facilities in schools of all levels and types.