Study on the Elderly-oriented Improvement of Rural Idle Schools

In recent years, a large number of rural schools have been idle due to some reasons such as “school mergence”. After China stepped into the aging society in 1999, the aging population surged, and it has become a huge challenge for nowadays society. Compared with cities, the problem of supporting old people in some rural areas with backward economics and culture is more prominent. Rationally transforming the idle “Hope Project” into “Setting Sun Project” will be an effective way to alleviate the problem of rural elderly care. This paper studies the elderly-oriented improvement of rural idle schools in order to alleviate and improve the current situation of rural old-age care. Keywords—rural; idle schools; elderly-oriented improvement I. THE CURRENT SITUATION OF RURAL ELDERLY CARE A. Limited Number of Beds in Nursing Homes in Rural Areas From the end of 2012 to the end of 2017, the number of beds in nursing homes in China increased from 3.81 million to 7.142 million [1], almost increased by double. However, due to the continuous increase of the elderly population, the per capita beds in nursing homes for the elderly tend to be stable after the rapid growth (see “Fig.1”). The Thirteenth Five-year Plan describes the current aging situation as “severe situation”, and indicates that the aging degree of the actual resident population in rural areas may be further deepened. Fig. 1. Elderly care beds per thousand elderly people in 2012-2017 B. Great Differences in the Rural Elderly Population Received by Care Facilities Supported by the government, rural happiness homes have been implemented rapidly. Based on providing day care, it has become the main way and form to develop the care facilities for the elderly in rural areas. For example, by 2017, Henan province had built 8,639 rural happiness homes [2], giving full play to their public welfare nature and pension function and providing convenience for nearby villagers. These elderly care facilities mainly receive self-care elderly people, are equipped with a small number of service personnel to offer basic daily services including catering and sanitation, and guide people to help each other and enjoy old-age resources. Because of the limited beds, it cannot meet the needs of the elderly in rural areas. Another form of care facilities for the elderly in rural areas is private non-enterprises. Compared with rural happiness homes, it has a smaller number with a larger scale, a wider geographical range for receiving population, and lower requirements for the elderly self-care ability, and its charge is mainly based on the elderly self-care ability. This kind of care facility for the elderly is the main form to address the collective pension of the disabled elderly in rural areas, and it also becomes an effective supplement for the collective pension of the elderly in urban areas. However, due to the limitations of its distribution area, it is difficult for it to become the first choice for many rural elderly people. C. Backward Infrastructure of Care Centers for the Elderly in Rural Areas The construction of care facilities for the elderly in rural areas is mostly carried out during the communication between the person in charge and the craftsman. The lack of professional guidance and design will lead to unreasonable use of space and inconvenient use of space. Due to the limitation of funds, some functional space will be missing, thus greatly reducing the quality of care centers for the elderly in rural areas. II. SUITABILITY ANALYSIS OF THE ELDERLY-ORIENTED IMPROVEMENT OF IDLE SCHOOLS A. Idle Schools Provide a Site Support for the Elderlyoriented Improvement The phenomenon of “primary schools in every village and middle schools in every town” in the last century has been broken under the policy of “School Mergence” in this century, Chinese Library Classification No.: TU246.2; Document Code: A 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Beds/per thousand elderly people International Conference on Architecture: Heritage, Traditions and Innovations (AHTI 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 324