The National Education Conference proposed raising the requirements in teacher training. To meet these new demands, Shandong will explore new approaches to teacher advancement. Specifically, it will take the following measures:

(i) Increasing teachers’ political awareness to ensure they perform better in guiding the healthy development of students. To this end, XI Jinping Thought should be integrated into teacher training as a key component and the adherence to the code of professional ethics be considered the most important element in teacher evaluation;

(ii) Enhancing capacity building by raising the funding standard per student in teacher education programs at undergraduate level and increasing financial input into teacher training, and improving the training of outstanding teachers at provincial, municipal and county levels;

(iii) Introducing institutional reforms to revitalize the workforce through measures such as adopting innovative approaches to teacher recruitment and job rotation; and

(iv) Raising the social standing and improving the financial packages of teachers by optimizing the classification scheme for teaching positions and establishing a wage growth mechanism to ensure the average income of primary and secondary teachers remains in line with local public servants, implementing the rural teacher support program, and increasing efforts to reward and publicize excellent teaching to raise their prestige.