Lessons in educational management

(Baonghean) - At the end of March 2014, Nghe An Newspaper received a citizen's petition reflecting that at Nghi Dong Secondary School, Nghi Loc District, a teacher had taken a long leave of absence but was still on the school's payroll. Because the content was quite detailed and raised a very interesting issue, Nghe An Newspaper sent a reporter to verify and clarify...

There is right, there is wrong

The person mentioned in the complaint is teacher Nguyen Trung Hai, residing in Nghi Trung commune, Nghi Loc district. According to the complaint, teacher Nguyen Trung Hai started teaching at Nghi Dong Secondary School in 2002 and is still a teacher on the school's payroll. However, since 2005, teacher Hai has completely stopped teaching and started doing business outside. According to the person writing the complaint, this incident is against the State's regulations, so he requested Nghe An Newspaper to verify and clarify...

Nghi Dong Secondary School, Nghi Loc District.

Through investigation, since 2011, Nghi Dong Secondary School no longer exists because it merged with Nghi Hung Secondary School to form Hung Dong Secondary School. Contacting some teachers of Hung Dong Secondary School, it is known that teacher Nguyen Trung Hai is an English teacher. However, there is no story of him quitting teaching since 2005, at this time, teacher Nguyen Trung Hai was allowed by the district to study at university (from 2005 - 2007).

Working with the school union president, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh said: After the two schools merged, teacher Nguyen Trung Hai completed his teaching duties like other teachers. In the 2013-2014 school year, Mr. Hai submitted a petition to the school's Board of Directors. The petition had two parts, including a personal situation and a request to quit teaching; requesting the school to create conditions for him to ask for his wife (also an English teacher) to take his place. In response to this incident, the school's Board of Directors announced the petition to the school's Teachers' Council, agreeing to hire a replacement teacher while waiting for a decision from the superiors.

Since the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year (September 2013), the school has contracted with Ms. Le Thi Bich Huong, an English teacher at Nghi Hung Primary School, to replace Mr. Hai. Ms. Huong has fully met the teaching needs of the students. The school has deducted a portion of Mr. Hai's salary to pay Ms. Le Thi Bich Huong, the rest is put into the union fund, and at the same time, the same policies for Mr. Hai are maintained. "In my opinion, the way the school handled the situation is not shady..." - Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh said. To verify, Ms. Thanh presented a document from the school's teaching staff confirming the teacher's resignation. In this document, in addition to confirming the resignation of 2 teachers, including: English teacher Nguyen Trung Hai (resigned from the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year until now); Literature teacher Tran Thi Xuan (retired from the beginning of the 2013-2014 semester until now) stated: "After the two comrades asked to resign from teaching, the principal asked for the opinion of the collective of teachers, workers and civil servants in the school to agree to let the school hire substitute teachers. The salary of the two comrades is paid to the contract teachers: 8 million VND/month. The remaining amount is added to the union fund. The benefits of the two comrades on unpaid leave are still enjoyed like the benefits of the comrades in the school."

According to teacher Dau Van Kien - Principal of Hung Dong Secondary School, currently the Department of Home Affairs inspectors are also coming to the school to check this incident. Teacher Kien said that teacher Nguyen Trung Hai has quite special circumstances, his wife is a teacher in Dien Trung commune, Dien Chau district, has two small children and his father is a 3/4 war invalid; teacher Hai himself had an accident in 2011 and lost a hand, it was quite difficult to travel a long distance from Quan Hanh town to Nghi Hung to teach. "Hai intended to quit teaching in 2012. At the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, he quit teaching. The school asked Mr. Hai to return to teaching, otherwise he had to submit an application. After that, Mr. Hai submitted an application stating his wishes and I confirmed in the application for him to submit to the District Education Department. In this incident, I did not do anything shady or selfish, I just wanted to help people in difficult circumstances..." - Teacher Kien said. When asked: Regarding the incident of teacher Nguyen Trung Hai, did the school have a written report to the Department of Education? According to Mr. Kien, because the school had confirmed the application for teacher Nguyen Trung Hai to submit to the Department of Education, the school did not make a written report. After the Department of Internal Affairs inspector came to work, the school realized that the resolution of the surrounding issues of teacher Nguyen Trung Hai was not in accordance with state regulations...

Lessons in management

Working with the Nghi Loc District Education Department, according to Mr. Nguyen Dinh Trung - the organization officer, the Department was completely unaware of the teacher Nguyen Trung Hai's wish to resign. "It is likely that teacher Nguyen Trung Hai sent the application directly to the Head of the Department Nguyen Duc Thinh (now the Chairman of the District Labor Federation), but we only learned about the incident through the inspector of the Department of Home Affairs" - Mr. Trung affirmed. At the same time, Mr. Trung also said that he and the inspector of the Department of Home Affairs inspected Hung Dong Secondary School. Through checking the books, payroll..., teacher Nguyen Trung Hai stopped teaching since September 2013. During the inspection, Hung Dong Secondary School also asked teacher Hai to report the incident and the content was exactly as the information stated above. The Department of Home Affairs inspection team has not yet reached a conclusion, but the Department of Education determined that Hung Dong Secondary School's decision to let teacher Nguyen Trung Hai quit his job; the contract for a substitute teacher was not in accordance with regulations. The school should have reported to the Department for specific handling instructions.

According to Mr. Trung, in the near future, the Department of Education will set up an inspection team to verify the incident. The handling method discussed is to recover all the salary for the months that teacher Nguyen Trung Hai was absent from teaching to return to the budget. Organize a review of the principal, vice principal and school accountant; Clarify the matter of teacher Nguyen Trung Hai's absence from teaching to determine which is the fault of the school and which is the fault of the individual who left teaching to handle according to the Law on Education and Decree No. 27 on disciplinary action against civil servants and the responsibility for compensation and refund of civil servants. If teacher Nguyen Trung Hai still wishes to quit his job, he must report to the District People's Committee for handling. However, during the handling period, teacher Nguyen Trung Hai will have to return to work at school; The Department of Education must also seriously review because there have been shortcomings in management work and lack of close supervision of the grassroots in the past.

We met with the Chairman of the Nghi Loc Labor Union, Mr. Nguyen Duc Thinh, to clarify why the Nghi Loc Education Department had no information about teacher Nguyen Trung Hai's resignation. Although he had been dismissed from his position as Head of the Education Department for more than 4 months, Mr. Thinh still remembered quite clearly the letter from teacher Nguyen Trung Hai. Mr. Thinh said: "That was a letter of request. In the letter, he asked for his wife to take his place, but the department did not have the authority to resolve it. Because it was a letter of request from an individual teacher, while Hung Dong Secondary School did not report anything about the teacher's resignation, the department did not have any comments to the school...''. According to Mr. Thinh, because the Nghi Loc area is large and complicated, many teachers have families in the central area or Vinh City, so it is difficult to carry out their duties and lead to the resignation. "Although it is not under the authority of the department, I have discussed with the Principals in the area that we must not create a precedent for any teacher. If we flexibly resolve a teacher's situation because of feelings, it will be very difficult for the organization later..." - Mr. Thinh shared.

Thus, it can be seen that although the complaint is not completely accurate, the information about the teacher quitting his job against regulations is true. According to the principle, when a teacher resigns, the school leader must have a written report clearly stating the incident to the Department of Education so that the department can report to the District People's Committee to cut the salary payment from the budget, arrange new personnel or request funding for the school to temporarily contract a substitute teacher... Obviously, because of the "family" style of handling the matter, Hung Dong Secondary School has violated state regulations. The incident has not caused serious consequences, however, this is a lesson in educational management that schools must learn from.

Article and photos:Ha Giang