A notice has been issued to deploy the Silver-Age Teaching Program, making full use of the professional and experiential strengths of retired teachers to promote balanced allocation of high-quality teaching resources and build a high-level teaching workforce for the new era.
The notice proposes recruiting 6,000 teaching teachers at the compulsory education stage in 2026, including 130 in Shanxi Province.
The notice specifies that the 2026 Silver-Age Teaching Program will mainly target poverty-stricken counties, underdeveloped ethnic minority counties, old revolutionary base counties, border counties, and regimental farms of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, with priority given to key counties receiving national rural revitalization assistance. The recipient schools are county-level, township, and rural schools. This year, the plan is to recruit 6,000 silver-age teaching teachers at the compulsory education stage. On this basis, localities are encouraged to select outstanding retired teachers on their own to carry out teaching in other counties and townships with weak educational development, and to include regular high schools in the self-implemented scope as needed.
The notice emphasizes that retired teachers applying for the Silver-Age Teaching Program should mainly be principals, teaching researchers, special-grade teachers, and backbone teachers. Applicants are required to be politically reliable, morally upright, and deeply committed to education, dedicated to their work, highly competent, in good health, willing to contribute, and solid in work style, with rich teaching experience. In principle, they should hold an intermediate or higher teaching title, with senior teachers making up the majority. The service period should generally be no less than one academic year, and consecutive teaching by those who pass assessment is encouraged. Retired teachers rehired by their original institutions are not included in the Silver-Age Teaching Program.
The notice requires proper arrangements for the treatment and support of teaching teachers. During their service period, their personnel relationships and current retirement benefits remain unchanged, and working funds are disbursed monthly, mainly for work subsidies, travel expenses, and accident insurance premiums for teaching teachers. For teaching teachers at the compulsory education stage, working funds are shared by the central and local governments at an annual per capita standard of 20,000 yuan. Recipient counties must provide transitional housing for teaching teachers and equip them with necessary living facilities.
The notice requires that all localities promptly launch public recruitment of teaching teachers in light of actual conditions, coordinate across different regions, give priority to key counties receiving national rural revitalization assistance and other educationally underdeveloped areas, as well as areas, school stages, schools, and subjects facing temporary teacher shortages, and publish recruitment information through multiple channels to attract qualified retired teachers to actively participate, contributing silver-haired strength to improving education quality in underdeveloped areas and advancing balanced educational development.
Source: Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China