Providing education in rural areas is not an attractive perspective for most teachers. Whether it is a school in South Africa or in a remote Chinese village, teachers face many obstructions. Especially if they are young graduates who decided to dedicate themselves to this job. Poverty, absent infrastructure, inability to develop professionally, working with children of the poorest families, and technological challenges induce young teachers to search for a better opportunity far from their home villages.
The general tendency shows that most people are likely to leave their villages and come to the big cities to earn money for the most basic needs. And teachers are not an exception. There are hundreds of schools in cities like Shanghai, and young graduates are not willing to spend their time and efforts on teaching in a rural school which is miles away from their home and there is no satisfactory infrastructure to go there every day. Rural schools all over the world face a dramatic shortage of staff, consequently, they become closed. That is the reason why rural places may have only one school for several villages where only few teachers still work.
Social support of young teachers may be provided by the principles who need to stay interested in the development of their school. The more young and well-trained teachers stay in the rural places instead of moving to cities, the better will be for hundreds of children who attend this rural school. On the other hand, principals themselves do not feel supported by their state or local governments. They have to combine teaching and a lot of administrative work every day.