Substitute teachers from nine provinces petition the Ministry of Education
On September 10th 2015, more than one hundred and thirty private substitute teachers representatives from a total of nine provinces, including Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Anhui, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Hunan and Hubei, collectively petitioned the Ministry of Education in Beijing calling for the implementation of the spirit of document 8 from 2011, which would allow private off-post substitute teachers to be included in the urban enterprise employees social security and health care system. In addition to this, forty teacher representatives from three counties in Jiangxi province also went to the provincial government to petition for their rights. The provincial government representative responded that since it is at the same level in the hierarchy of governmental power as the Ministry of Education, it can therefore simply ignore the document, and also the provincial government does not have the money.