New school year, schools are 'looking red-eyed' to recruit contract teachers

Teachers are not interested

After 3 years of retirement, this school year, teacher Dau Thi Lan returned to her old school, working as a contract teacher for Nghi Phuong Secondary School (Nghi Loc). At the age of 58, this was not an easy task for her, even "reluctantly", but "out of gratitude and respect" for the old school board, she decided to take this job.

"The school principal called me in the middle of summer and I hesitated many times. Honestly, at this age, I think going back to teaching is very difficult," Lan said.

As a contract teacher, but as soon as she took on the assignment, teacher Dao Thi Lan was assigned to be the homeroom teacher. In addition to teaching Literature as her main subject, she also taught Music and Civic Education. This former teacher also said that after retiring, she had an old computer that she lent to her nephew. Now that she has taken it back, although the computer is no longer as intact as before, she still has to use it regularly because of the requirements of preparing lessons according to electronic lesson plans and researching documents.

The biggest difficulty for her now is that she used to teach according to the old curriculum, but now that she has returned, the curriculum has changed to new textbooks, requiring higher knowledge and technology. Meanwhile, old people like her have a lot of difficulty accepting the new things. The remaining subjects, although not specialized, she hopes that with the support of her colleagues, she will be able to "fulfill her role", because she used to teach Music and "knows how to read music notes and sing"...

Nghi Phuong Secondary School currently has only 12 permanent teachers and only teachers in charge of Math, Literature, English, and Civic Education. The rest of the teachers, the school has to contract and currently has 8 teachers.

For many years now, to support schools, the district has paid 4.5 million VND/month for contract teachers. In addition, if the school balances its finances, it can support about 300,000 VND/month. However, with the low payment level and the specific characteristics of Nghi Phuong being a commune far from the center, finding contract teachers is very difficult at this time.

Teacher Nguyen Cong Son - Principal of the school added: We have a hard time finding contract teachers because teachers mainly come from Vinh city or Cua Lo town. The contract salary is not enough to cover the teachers' travel expenses. Therefore, we are forced to find solutions such as contracting retired teachers, contracting additional teachers to teach inter-school or arranging teachers to teach interdisciplinary subjects even though most teachers have taught more hours than required.

It has entered the second week of school, but up to this point, Hong Lam Technical Economic College has not been able to recruit a History teacher, although the school has used many relationships and posted on many media. The lack of cultural teachers has caused many difficulties in organizing teaching at the school. Mr. Phan Xuan Dung - Principal of the school said that, in the immediate future, the school must mobilize a school staff member who is a former History teacher to take on additional teaching duties.

"Supply" does not meet "demand"

Entering the new school year, Nghe An is lacking about 6,000 teachers at many different levels, mainly preschool, primary and secondary school teachers. In the context of general difficulties, many localities have allocated funds to support schools in recruiting contract teachers to ensure there are enough teachers for schools.

Mr. Nguyen Van Thong - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Nghi Loc district said: Every year, the district allocates a budget of about 10 billion VND to support payment for schools. For example, this year, the whole district has to contract nearly 300 teachers... This is also the plan that districts such as Nam Dan, Dien Chau, Do Luong, Tuong Duong... have implemented for many years.

Due to the high demand but the number of teachers graduating each year is not much, finding contract teachers is really not easy. Teacher Nguyen Duc Canh - Principal of Quan Bau Secondary School (Vinh City) said: This year, the school is short of 10 teachers, so the recruitment of contract teachers must start in the summer. NumberteacherNew recruits are mainly newly graduated teachers and part-time contract teachers. In addition, to make up for the shortage of teachers, the school encourages teachers in the school to teach more hours.

Regarding teacher recruitment, on the Nghe An Teacher Recruitment page, in the past few months, recruitment registration information has been quite bustling. However, if in the past, recruitment information was mainly for job seekers, now there is more about finding people.

Teacher Tran Thi Thu Hang - Principal of Hung Dong Primary School (Vinh City) said: We need to recruit an English teacher with a degree in English Pedagogy, with B1, B2 certificates, but even though we have posted for more than a week, we still have not found a teacher. There are some applications that have been submitted but they do not meet the standards. In fact, compared to other teachers, recruiting English teachers is very difficult because our school is far from the center, the contract salary is not high and we have to compete with many other schools and foreign language centers in the area.

The teacher shortage is not only happening this school year but is expected to recur in many years to come. This also explains why in recent years, the number of 12th graders enrolling in teacher training has increased and teacher training has become a “hot” major at many universities.

Many education managers also predict that the number of students at all levels will continue to increase and that in just 5 to 10 years, the number of retired teachers will be very high. Therefore, in the planning work, there needs to be longer-term strategies to promptly supplement the shortage of teachers, avoid the current prolonged shortage of teachers and prevent the situation of "supply" not meeting "demand"./.