Increasing staffing levels and reducing working hours for preschool teachers: A difficult problem?

(Baonghean)At the recent meeting between National Assembly and Provincial People's Council delegates and voters, the issue that voters were interested in and mentioned was the implementation of staffing and reducing working hours for preschool teachers, which still has shortcomings.

Most preschool teachers work very hard, on average over 10 hours a day, starting from 6:30 am to 5 pm, not to mention that if parents pick up their children late, teachers also have to stay behind to look after them. Besides the pressure of time, preschool teachers also have to deal with the pressure of workload. There are currently classes with over 40 children, with 100% boarding students, but only 1.5 teachers in charge of the class.



Drawing class of Hung Dung 2 kindergarten children. Photo: Huy Duc.

For preschools, it is not only about caring for and nurturing children, but according to the new education program, it is necessary to research related documents, make teaching aids, especially teachers in charge of groups of 5-year-old children, which requires organizing many activities and keeping popular books. Although the State has regulations on staffing standards, 1 teacher/class of 20-25 non-boarding children; 2 teachers/class of 25-30 boarding children 100%; if each preschool class increases by 10 children, 1 more teacher will be arranged (according to Joint Circular No. 71/2007 of the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Home Affairs); The regulation on working hours for preschool teachers in public preschools is 6 hours/day and they must perform preparation work for class hours as well as other tasks prescribed by the principal to convert to ensure working 40 hours/week (according to Circular 48/2011/TT-BGDDT), but in reality, preschools in the province have not been able to do this.

Voter Nguyen Thi Lieu, a teacher of the 5-year-old group at Dien Hoang Kindergarten (Dien Chau), reflected: “Currently, the number of teachers in my school is not enough according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training. If a teacher is sick or on maternity leave, there is no one to replace her, or if she is on leave, she has to take unpaid leave to save money to pay her contracted employees, affecting the teachers' rights”. Ms. Lieu also made a comparison, teachers at other levels have some breaks during the week, while preschool teachers have to work from the beginning of the week to the end of the week, and are on duty at noon without any benefits. A lot of work, a lack of teachers compared to regulations, leading to pressure on working hours is a common situation for preschool teachers in the province today.

Dien Hoang Kindergarten (Dien Chau) has 9 groups of children with 290 children, of which 17 teachers directly teach the class, an average of 1.5 teachers/class. Principal Tran Thi Luyen said: The number of children is large, 100% boarding, knowing that teachers are overloaded with work and working hours, but the school does not know what to do. Currently, the school has only signed contracts with 4 caregivers, 2 teachers, 1 security guard, each month the school has to spend 10 million VND to pay salaries for these 7 contracts, causing the school's resources to be "negative". Ms. Luyen suggested that the province should increase the staffing for kindergartens to meet the Central's regulations to reduce pressure on teachers; at the same time, there should be a staffing for caregivers for kindergartens.

To take care of the preschool teachers, the province has converted 353 semi-public preschools to public ones and focused on investing in facilities for preschools, eliminating temporary classrooms, borrowed classrooms, and degraded classrooms, building functional rooms, purchasing equipment, and toys for children... In 2012 alone, this level of education prioritized an investment budget of 101 billion VND to build 5 preschools; eliminating 107 temporarily borrowed and degraded classrooms... Regarding policies for the teaching staff, from having no state payroll, there are now 5,684 preschool teachers and staff on the payroll, enjoying salary according to the salary scale and grades prescribed by the State, salary allowances according to regulations, social insurance, and health insurance.

It can be said that, despite efforts and attempts, there are still many shortcomings in comparing the workload and time of preschool teachers with the regulations. Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Chi - Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training, delegate of the Provincial People's Council, said: Regarding the regulation of 6 working hours/day for preschool teachers, the policy is like that but has not been implemented. The solution to fundamentally solve the problem of working hours for teachers is to increase after-hours support services to mobilize socialization and responsibility of parents, ensure working regimes, and implement after-hours services that preschool teachers perform for their children. Recently, the Department of Education and Training has also advised the Provincial People's Committee to deploy a model of high-quality preschools with the aim of introducing after-hours services, contributing to improving the quality of child care and education, meeting the actual needs of parents, and at the same time removing the difficulties that voters have reflected.

Obviously, from the parents' side, they want the school to receive their children early, give them breakfast, take care of them and let them take a nap at school... to facilitate their work. The problem is that it is necessary to study how to apply it to ensure both the regime for teachers and create high consensus among the people, so that the Nghe An preschool education system can develop more and more!

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