Senior-ranked elementary school teachers will be stripped of their professional titles if they are caught compiling academic guides or exercise books for personal profit, the Shanghai Education Commission said yesterday.

Educators who participate in designing college or high school entrance exams will also be banned from publishing any exam-related exercise books within three years of their design assignment.

Offenders will be prohibited from taking part in all city-level exam design work, textbook writing and editing, as well as giving lectures. They will also lose the pay allowance given to senior teachers and the prestige associated with the title.

In addition, the rules require publishing houses to ensure the authors of all exercise books have registered their real identities, officials said.

"Excessive exam-oriented exercise books have seriously burdened elementary school students, and the new regulation is another action taken to ease the burden and create a healthy study environment for students," the commission said in a statement yesterday.

Inviting renowned senior teachers or educators with exam design experience to compile exercise books is the preferred route for publisher seeking to produce best sellers, as parents tend to be attracted by the author's fame when choosing academic guide books for their children.

The problem, however, is that the use of these teaching books outside of class increases the study pressures on local youngsters, the commission has indicated.

(Shanghai Daily May 12, 2005)