Nghe An lacks about 6,500 teachers before the new school year

Recurrence of local surplus and shortage

From a school scale of 24 classes, this year Trung Do Secondary School (Vinh city) increased to 28 classes and moved from a grade 2 school to a grade 1 school. With an increase in students and classes, this school year the school can still ensure enough classrooms for students to study in one shift by converting common classrooms such as the foreign language room and projector room to classrooms. But just the matter ofteacher shortageIt is indeed a difficulty when the school is currently short of 7 people.

Regarding this, teacher Nguyen Minh Khoa - Principal of the school said: If calculated according to the ratio of 1.72 teachers/class, we are currently short of 7 teachers in subjects such as: Physical Education, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Informatics, Math... This is a difficulty for the school in arranging teachers for this school year and we are still waiting for additional staff. In case the city does not have additional teachers, the school is forced to deduct a portion of the tuition fee to contract teachers.

The school principal also said that contracting teachers to have enough teachers to teach is only a short-term solution because it is difficult to ensure quality. Because these are all young teachers, newly graduated, do not have much experience, and have not received much professional training. Therefore, when recruiting these teachers, the school must spend many months training, guiding and giving them practice teaching. The second solution is to contract with some teachers to teach extra hours at other schools. However, this is not feasible because the current shortage of teachers is common in schools.

In the general context, the school is considering encouraging teachers to teach more hours or take on additional subjects. However, this option may not be suitable because this is the third year the school has implemented the new program for grades 6, 7, and 8. If the “2 in 1” or “3 in 1” teacher option is used, the quality of teachers will not be guaranteed and may lead to overload for many teachers.

Not only in secondary schools, the shortage of teachers in the city also occurs in preschools and primary schools. For example, at Hung Loc Primary School, this year the school has 42 classes but only 50 teachers. There is a shortage of teachers but the school has 2 campuses, quite far apart, so arranging teachers is really difficult.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hien - Principal of the school said: We are planning to sign contracts with nearly 10 teachers, including 4 cultural teachers, 3 English teachers, and 1 IT teacher. However, it is very difficult to sign contracts with teachers, especially IT teachers. We have announced it for more than a month now but have not been able to recruit.

In the entire Vinh city, in the 2022-2023 school year, there is a shortage of 227 teachers at all three levels, most of whom are preschool teachers. However, this school year, the risk of teacher shortage continues to increase, especially at the secondary school level because the expected demand is 1,003 teachers but the current payroll has only 884 teachers.

The city is currently recruiting teachers, but there are only 14 teachers at the secondary level, so they can only meet a small portion of the demand. The shortage of teachers forces schools to sign contracts to meet basic teaching and learning needs.

In Nam Dan district, although it is one of the districts that does a good job in recruiting and arranging teachers at all levels, it still cannot avoid the shortage of teachers at all levels.

Mr. Le Trung Son - Head of the District Education and Training Department said: Currently, if calculated according to the provincial quota, Nam Dan district is only short of more than 20 teachers. But if calculated according to regulations, it is short of more than 100 teachers. For example, at the preschool level, our current teacher ratio is only 1.76 teachers/class, while the regulation is 2.2 teachers/class. At the secondary school level, for the past 8 years, we have not had a recruitment target because we have a surplus of teachers. But in some subjects of this level, there is a shortage of teachers such as Chemistry, Music, and Fine Arts.

Across the province, statistics show a shortage of about 6,500 teachers this school year, leading to difficulties for schools in arranging and organizing staff. This is also a difficult problem that has been going on for many years but still has no definitive solution.

Difficulties in transfer and assignment

The summary table of surplus and shortage of teachers in schools in Thanh Chuong district to prepare for the plan to arrange and second teachers for the 2023-2024 school year is full of data.

In the balance index between existing teachers and teachers according to regulations, the number of schools with negative index is quite large, including many schools with negative indexes of up to 5.6 teachers. The current difficulty is that on average, although the number of teachers in the whole district is not enough, the Department of Education must balance and arrange appropriately between schools from places with surplus to places with shortage, from places with little shortage to places with great shortage.

At Thanh Lien Primary School, this year the school has 17 classes but only 23 teachers, the teacher ratio is only over 1.3 teachers/class. Although currently, if to ensure teachers according to the regulation of 1.5 teachers/class, the school is still lacking teachers, but this school year the school still received a decision to second 2 cultural teachers to share with the more difficult school, Hanh Lam Primary School.

Talking about this, teacher Nguyen Xuan Quang - Principal of the school said: Lack of teachers is a common situation in the district, so we still have to try to arrange things according to reality. With 2 seconded teachers, we base it on their wishes and fortunately, the teachers all support because most teachers have to do it at least once. Among them, there is 1 female teacher who asked to be seconded to be close to her husband's workplace, convenient for commuting. The remaining is 1 male teacher who also volunteered to be seconded for 1 year to support female teachers who are old and have poor health.

Previously, since 2016, Thanh Chuong district has "arranged and improved the quality of the teaching staff for the period 2016-2020 and the following years".

During the implementation process, the district has to transfer teachers every year to harmonize the quality of teachers between schools and regions, and balance teachers between subjects and levels. The implementation has also been adjusted to be suitable for reality but to some extent to meet the wishes of teachers.

Compared to regulations, we are short of 437 primary and preschool teachers, compared to the provincial quota, we are short of 109 people. Meanwhile, the secondary school level has a surplus of 141 teachers but lacks teachers in subjects such as English, IT, Chemistry. Therefore, this year we plan to arrange secondary school teachers to teach at primary schools on a secondment basis for no more than 1 year, arrange English teachers to teach inter-school for primary schools, arrange inter-school teaching for subjects that are lacking teachers such as IT, Chemistry, and provide funding for the lack of teachers at primary and preschool levels for teachers to make up for teaching hours.

Mr. Tran Xuan Ha - Head of Education and Training Department of Thanh Chuong district

Nam Dan District is also planning to dispatch 22 teachers to coordinate teachers between schools. This is also one of the few localities that annually allocates several billion VND to support contract schools to add teachers or teach more hours.

In Yen Thanh district, in addition to urgently recruiting 394 teachers for the next school year, the district continues to transfer nearly 100 teachers between schools to ensure adjustment, balance and supplement of teachers and staff for schools and promptly resolve the legitimate wishes of teachers and staff in requesting to transfer to a convenient workplace, with peace of mind for long-term work.

Mr. Hoang Danh Truyen - Vice Chairman of Yen Thanh District People's Committee said: The transfer and assignment of teachers and staff is a regular activity at the beginning of the school year, based on actual needs, ensuring reasonable quantity and synchronous structure of job positions to stabilize the team, well meet the teaching and education needs of schools. According to regulations, the assignment period of teachers and staff is not more than 3 years. Female teachers and staff who are pregnant or raising children under 36 months old are not assigned.

In order for the mobilization, rotation, secondment, and transfer of civil servants and public employees in the Education and Training sector to comply with regulations, since October 2019, the People's Committee of Nghe An province has also issued quite detailed instructions and regulations for each subject.

This is also considered the basis for localities to carry out secondments and transfers in accordance with regulations and for relevant departments and sectors to monitor the implementation, to both meet teaching and learning requirements and still ensure the rights of teachers./.