Substitute teachers refer to temporary teachers who have no career establishment in rural schools. Before the end of 1984, they were called private education. The temporary teachers who have been teaching before this time have basically turned positive or retired. 1985, private education is not allowed in the country.

However, many remote and poor mountainous areas are unable to recruit public teachers or public teachers are unwilling to go because of economic difficulties. These vacancies still need temporary teachers to fill. They are called "substitute teachers".

There are two differences between substitute teachers and regular teachers (also called in-service teachers):

First, different meanings:

The meaning of substitute teacher: refers to the temporary teacher who has no career establishment in the school. They were called private teachers before the end of 1984, and the temporary teachers who had taught before were basically full-time or retired. 1985, private education is not allowed in the country.

The meaning of formal teachers: refers to those who work in the front line of school teaching, have an establishment, and are formal school teachers (those who have been put on record by the Personnel Bureau and the Education Bureau), such as teachers in public schools and contract teachers in private schools.

Second, the characteristics are different:

The characteristics of substitute teachers: substitute teachers have no "birthright", but they play an active role in a specific historical stage. Especially in the western region and remote rural areas, substitute teachers bear the historical responsibility of maintaining compulsory education, and substitute teachers are the last choice when educational resources are insufficient. Generally speaking, substitute teachers have not received systematic training and their teaching level is not high. Long-term teaching is not conducive to the improvement of teaching quality and national quality.

Characteristics of regular teachers: the tutors are all in-service front-line teachers with teaching experience of more than 5 years. The teaching content is general counseling for primary schools, junior high schools and senior high schools and various extracurricular teaching materials. Based on the current syllabus, combined with the characteristics of current textbooks and teaching, unit tracking, personalization, comprehensive counseling and modular teaching are implemented.