Nghe An still lacks 7,000 teachers at all levels.

On the morning of October 11, the monitoring delegation of the Provincial People's Council's Legal Committee on the implementation of State management on organizational structure, payroll, and labor contracts at State agencies and public service units had a working session at the Department of Education and Training.

Attending the meeting were comrade Nguyen Nam Dinh - Member of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, Permanent Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council. Photo: Thanh Le

Many difficulties and problems

Implementing the policy of merging, arranging and reorganizing public service units to reduce the number of focal points, in the period of 2020-2022, the entire Education and Training sector of Nghe An province has reduced 51 public service units (14 kindergartens, 28 primary schools, 7 secondary schools, 1 project management board, and 1 provincial technical and vocational center); reduced 47 kindergartens, 87 primary schools and 2 secondary schools.

Comrade Pham Thanh Chung - Head of the Legal Department of the Provincial People's Council, Head of the Supervisory Delegation discussed the purpose of the supervisory program. Photo: Thanh Le

582 professional teams and 1,291 office teams have been reduced (in particular, units under the Department of Education and Training have reduced 174/467 professional teams, 71/76 office teams; 174 team leaders and 73 deputy team leaders; 71 team leaders and 54 deputy team leaders of the office have been reduced). For the Department of Education and Training, from 2015 to present, 8 staff have been reduced (reaching 10%), ensuring the rate of streamlining staff.

According to the assessment of the Department of Education and Training, the organizational structure and staffing of the units have complied with the regulations of the competent authority, the number of public service units and the number of staffing levels have been initially streamlined. Strictly implement the rectification of the labor contract situation in agencies and units according to the provisions of law and in accordance with reality.

Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training Dao Cong Loi reflects on the difficulties and shortcomings of the sector in implementing the policy of streamlining staff. Photo: Thanh Le

According to Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training Dao Cong Loi, the implementation of staff streamlining in the education sector has encountered many difficulties and shortcomings. To ensure the staff streamlining target, the education sector has drastically reduced the number of service staff and management staff.

Meanwhile, the tasks assigned to the Education and Training sector are increasingly numerous and heavy; the province's area is large, the scale of schools and classes is large (more than 1,600 schools) and there are many educational institutions in remote areas, so the Department's implementation of the tasks of guidance, inspection, testing, verification, professional training, etc. is difficult.

Members of the monitoring delegation attended the meeting. Photo: Thanh Le

Regarding this issue, comrade Nguyen Hong Hoa - Head of the Primary Education Department of the Department of Education and Training added: Implementing the 2018 general education program, accordingly, a number of new subjects are included in the compulsory and elective programs (Primary school has Informatics and Foreign Languages; middle school, high school has Natural Sciences, Music, Fine Arts) if the staff is not increased, it will cause difficulties in teaching these new subjects. Many mountainous districts currently cannot recruit teachers to teach Informatics and Foreign Languages.

The number of teachers working at all levels of education in Nghe An (especially preschool and primary schools) is lower than the regulation (7,000 people short). Photo: Thanh Le

In the past 5 years, the number of primary school students increased by more than 73,000 students, increased by 930 classes, if according to the standard of 1.3 teachers/class, about 1,200 teachers are needed, while the number of teachers has not increased, even decreased. The number of teachers at all levels (especially preschool and primary) is lower than the regulation (7,000 people short)" - Comrade Nguyen Hong Hoa added.

The Department of Education and Training also reflected that school mergers should not be mechanically linked to commune mergers, because in reality, the scale, area, population, and number of school-age students of communes are not equivalent. Some communes have many times more students than other communes.

Arrange enough workers

Working with the monitoring team, the Department of Education and Training proposed the arrangement of organization and apparatus: Arrange and streamline, but must be suitable to the characteristics of the subject, level of study, and meet the needs of learners. Propose that the Ministry of Education and Training issue a framework regulation on the number of subject groups and deputy group leaders in preschools and general schools.

The Department also proposed to arrange enough employees (career staff receiving salaries from the State budget) for the Nghe An Education sector to carry out the task of 7,000 people (preschool is 3,172; primary is 2,667; secondary is 1,012; high school is 149).

Propose to soon issue tuition support policies for students and support policies for teachers and employees of non-public educational institutions.

Comrade Nguyen Nam Dinh - Member of the Provincial Party Committee, Permanent Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council spoke at the meeting. Photo: Thanh Le

Speaking at the meeting, Comrade Nguyen Nam Dinh - Member of the Provincial Party Committee, Permanent Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Council shared the difficulties of the provincial education sector. He suggested that in order to reduce the pressure of difficulties, in the coming time, the sector should advise the province and localities to call for support for businesses to invest in developing the public school system to reduce the burden on the State budget. Along with that, it is necessary to do a good job of propaganda so that parents do not discriminate between public and private schools.

The Department needs to continue streamlining the focal points and reducing intermediaries and internal organizations. "The streamlining of staff to reduce focal points must ensure the highest goal of maintaining and ensuring teaching and learning. Therefore, the sector needs to be extremely flexible in merging schools" - Comrade Nguyen Nam Dinh emphasized.

Representatives of the Department of Education and Training received comments from the monitoring delegation. Photo: Thanh Le

Along with streamlining the focal points, the industry needs to encourage the implementation of promoting the application of information technology and digital transformation in the field of education and training. At the same time, coordinate with all levels and sectors to pay attention to policies for the teaching staff./.