Nghe An: Increased pressure on schools due to increased number of students in the new school year
(Baonghean.vn) - At this time, localities and schools have just completed the planning for the 2024-2025 school year and prepared plans for facilities and teacher staff. Next year, the increase in the number of students and the increase in the number of classes will also greatly affect the implementation.
Pressure increases the layer
Hoang Mai 2 High School is one of two public schools located in Hoang Mai town. This year, the school turns 8 years old and for the same number of years the school has had to rent and borrow, so the school's physical conditions are still difficult. In recent years, the school's size was 30 classes but in reality the school only has 25 rooms. In the past 3 years, the school's students have studied in 2 shifts, morning and afternoon.
This school year, according to the school's plan just approved by the Department of Education and Training, the number of 10th grade classes will increase from 8 to 10. The quota for each class will also increase by 3 students. Increasing the number of 10th grade classes in Hoang Mai town is urgent, because this school year the town has more than 2,000 9th grade students. However, the quota for public schools in the town is only about 1,000 students.
Hoang Mai town is the only locality without non-public schools or continuing education centers. With this increase in classes, in the current context, the arrangement of facilities and teaching staff at Hoang Mai 2 High School will have certain additional difficulties.
Speaking more about this, teacher Nguyen Xuan Bai - Vice Principal said: We have at least 3 difficulties, the first is about facilities. In previous years, if we had 2 shifts, our school only had 5 extra classrooms each session and even if we arranged it scientifically, we tried to have 3 extra sessions per week for each class. Meanwhile, there are many other activities such as training excellent students, extracurricular activities. In addition, because we study all day, the school's professional meetings must take place in the evening or on Sundays. Our teaching staff is currently also seriously lacking with 9 teachers, both according to regulations and in some specific subjects.
Especially in our school, because the student intake is not high, most of the students choose Social Science as their elective subject. Therefore, teachers in this subject are full of classes, with extra classes. Meanwhile, teachers in Natural Science have to arrange other subjects to ensure enough classes. The school is also concerned that with low enrollment areas, if the number of classes increases, the quality of enrollment will decrease.
Next school year, 3 public schools in Vinh city, Ha Huy Tap High School, Le Viet Thuat High School and Huynh Thuc Khang High School, will each add 3 more classes. In the condition that there is not enough time to add more teachers, adding more classes will also lead to many difficulties.
The increase in students in Vinh city not only causes difficulties for students but also for schools. According to the development plan, the school was previously built with 45 classes. However, from the 2022-2023 school year, the school has expanded to 47 classes (including advanced classes).
In addition to the pressure on facilities, the school's biggest difficulty is the lack of teachers. Currently, our school is short of 8 teachers but they have not been supplemented. In my opinion, with the current increase, the number of classrooms in the school will not be enough, especially the functional rooms to meet the teaching requirements according to the new program. The school also needs to supplement the teaching staff and budget to meet the teaching requirements.
Difficult to arrange
Nghi Kim Secondary School - Vinh City has never faced such difficulties as in the 2023-2024 school year, especially in arranging teachers. Previously, at the beginning of the new school year, despite a severe shortage of teachers, close to the school opening day, the school's recruitment of contract teachers was still very difficult, with many subjects not being recruited enough.
In fact, the school currently has 21 classes with 884 students. However, the school currently has only 27 teachers. The ratioteacherCurrently, there are only 1.38 teachers/class, lower than the assigned target (1.57 teachers/class) and lower than the prescribed ratio (1.726 teachers/class). With the current number of contract teachers, the school is having to deduct part of the funding from tuition fees and part from city support.
With these current shortcomings, next school year, when the school plans to add 3 more classes, "the difficulties will become even more difficult."
Through discussion, teacher Luong Thi An Thanh - Principal shared: The shortage of teachers is serious because the number of students has increased rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, the number of additional teachers for the school is very slow. Recruiting contract teachers at the school is also more difficult than at schools in the center, because the salary payment per period is lower and the travel conditions are far away.
At this time, Quynh Vinh Secondary School (Hoang Mai town) is urgently constructing to put into use 8 more classrooms for the next school year. This is an urgent solution for the town when according to the plan, the number of classes and students in the area will increase, meaning a lot of pressure in arranging facilities and teaching staff.
Our school is not only short of teachers according to the prescribed ratio but also short of teachers according to the structure of each subject. Therefore, most teachers have to take on 2-3 subjects and have to teach extra hours according to the regulations. Recruiting contract teachers for a school far from the center like ours is not feasible because there are no applications. We only contracted 1 retired teacher to teach Civic Education.
In the whole Hoang Mai town, next school year there will be 10,042 students, an increase of 1,249 students compared to this school year. Although the number of students increased by 27 classes, the town's plan was approved to increase only 6 classes. This reality forced the town to merge many classes in the area, ensuring that each class will have about 44 students.
According to the new regulation, the number of classes will be allocated based on the number of students. However, when implemented in practice at the grassroots level, there will be situations where some places have too many classes, while others do not have enough classes according to the prescribed number of students. Therefore, when balancing the whole town, there will be difficulties and inadequacies in ensuring both the teacher structure and the existing school structure.
Meanwhile, the whole town is still lacking many teachers, teaching conditions in some schools are not guaranteed, some schools still have to study in 2 shifts such as Quynh Phuong Secondary School, Quynh Vinh Secondary School...
In Yen Thanh district, through discussion, Mr. Tran Xuan Tinh - Head of the district's Department of Education and Training shared: Next school year, the whole Yen Thanh district will increase by more than 30 classes and we have tried to arrange so that there is not too much disruption in the schools. The biggest difficulty now is that the Provincial People's Committee assigned teacher quotas for the school years much lower than the instructions in the Circulars.
Therefore, in the coming school year, we hope to add preschool teachers, at least ensuring the ratio of 2 teachers/class (currently only 1.56 teachers/class), add primary school teachers to ensure the minimum ratio of 1.3 teachers/class, prioritizing cultural teachers (at the beginning of the school year, there was a shortage of 40 cultural teachers). Currently, the ratio of secondary school teachers in the coming school year is only 1.75 teachers/class and there is currently a local surplus or shortage between subjects, leading to difficulty in properly arranging the teaching staff in schools.
The above difficulties are also the reality in many localities. Resolving these problems cannot be done overnight, but requires early planning and the synchronous participation of many departments and branches to help schools have the best preparation and mindset before entering the new school year./.