Regarding the proposal on how to calculate overtime for primary school teachers in Vinh city
Many teachers at Hung Binh Primary School (Vinh City) have submitted a petition regarding overtime pay and regular teaching hours for homeroom teachers. This is also an issue that many teachers are concerned about, especially after Circular 29 was implemented and had a significant impact on primary schools.
Questions about the number of periods
The petition of 42/45 homeroom teachers of Hung Binh Primary School (Vinh City) sent to the authorities has two main contents. Accordingly, many teachers requested that the school should strictly follow the spirit and regulations of Circular 28/2009/TT - BGDĐT regulating the working regime with general education teachers.
Specifically, according to many teachers, Circular 28 stipulates that the teaching quota for primary school teachers is 23 periods/week. However, if teachers concurrently hold other positions such as homeroom teacher, head of professional group, their teaching hours will be reduced by 3 periods/week, school council secretary, teacher concurrently head of school people's inspection committee will be reduced by 2 periods/week.
According to the above regulations, the homeroom teachers who filed the petition said that they only need to teach 20 actual periods per week. Other positions also need to reduce the number of periods depending on the concurrent position. However, in reality, teachers at Hung Binh Primary School still have to teach 22-23 periods and are not paid for overtime even though the school still collects "2-session/1-day tuition" from parents.
For the extra hours of the homeroom teacher, in the first semester, the teacher is paid 35,000 VND/hour for extra hours. This payment level is not in accordance with the regulations on overtime payment stipulated in Joint Circular No. 07/2013/TTLT - Ministry of Education and Training - Ministry of Finance - Ministry of Finance (salary for 1 extra hour of teaching = Salary for 1 teaching hour x 150%).
Homeroom teachers also said that currently, the school does not consider the flag-raising activities at the beginning of the week as regular teaching hours. Instead, the school considers them to be the compulsory duties and activities of homeroom teachers. This is contrary to the regulations in Circular 3535/BGDĐT-GDTH and Circular 32/BGDĐT-GDTH of the Ministry of Education and Training.
Pay the right person, the right task
Regarding this content, through discussion, Ms. Tran Thi Viet Ha - Principal of Hung Binh Primary School admitted that she had received the petition from teachers in the school and had informed the teachers about the contents of the petition. However, some teachers said that this explanation was not satisfactory.
According to the school principal, Hung Binh Primary School currently has 45 classes with 1,667 students. This school year, the school has 62 cultural teachers and if calculated according to the current ratio, the teacher-class ratio is nearly 1.378 teachers/class, there is a shortage of 2 teachers if calculated according to the ratio of 1.39 teachers/class: We are calculating according to the ratio of the actual number of teaching periods of teachers is 23 periods/1 week. The extra periods of homeroom teachers (if any) will be paid for extra periods.
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According to Ms. Tran Thi Viet Ha, due to the lack of teachers, this school year, based on the guidance of the Department of Education and Training, the Department has calculated the number of extra hours of teachers (from September 2024 to February 2025) to ensure enough teachers to teach all classes with each class duration of 32 periods/1 week. At the same time, the school has collected tuition fees from parents in the amount of 50,000 VND/1 student/1 month with the total amount collected up to February 2025 being 519 million VND.
In accordance with the Instruction No. 1996 on guidance on revenue and expenditure management for the 2024-2025 school year at public educational institutions in Nghe An province, Hung Binh Primary School has spent nearly 54 million VND to increase teaching hours to 2 sessions/day for teachers (equal to 150% of salary).
In addition, nearly 99 million VND was spent on contract salaries for guest teachers. The remaining amount was used by the school to pay security contract salaries (over 49 million), pay electricity and water bills (over 68 million), pay for students' drinking water (nearly 49 million) and return excess money to students (61 million) because after February 14, when Circular 29 was implemented, the school was not allowed to collect additional money.
The scene currently has 137 million VND remaining and is being returned to the treasury according to regulations.
The school principal also confirmed that for teachers who teach extra hours, the school pays them in accordance with Joint Circular No. 07/2013/TTLT - Ministry of Education and Training - Ministry of Finance - Ministry of Finance (salary for 1 hour of extra teaching = Salary for 1 hour of teaching x 150%).
The current problem revolves around the issue that teachers believe that the school's calculation of teachers having to actually teach 23 periods (but not deducting the periods of holding extra classes) is against the regulations. That means each teacher has to teach 25-26 periods/week beyond the limit. Meanwhile, for the extra periods, the school's payment is only 35,000-50,000 VND.
Regarding this content, the school principal said: Implementing inter-sectoral Document No. 440 dated March 26, 2019 guiding on organizationteach 2 sessions/dayThe money we collect from parents is to organize extra classes for Math, Vietnamese, English, and IT. Therefore, for the part-time classes (flag salute, class activities), the school must take from the budget according to internal spending regulations and can only balance about 35,000 VND/class.
Regarding the issue of homeroom teachers, one of the issues that teachers are concerned about is the part-time work of homeroom teachers. According to Principal Tran Thi Viet Ha, currently in the 2018 General Education Program, homeroom teachers have 3 part-time work periods including class activities, thematic activities, and flag-raising activities. In the first two periods, because the organization is carried out in each class, the school calculates the hours and pays overtime to teachers.
However, with the weekly flag-raising activities, due to the scale, they are usually organized by the whole school with different topics, so the school only pays the homeroom teachers assigned to carry them out (usually by class group or grade level).
We follow the instructions of the Department of Education and Training. The activities each week have a specific topic and follow the plan approved by the department. The homeroom teachers are assigned tasks, they have to develop the program, organize the activities. For the remaining classes, the homeroom teachers are responsible for managing the students when they participate in activities.
Ms. Tran Thi Viet Ha explains the calculation of points for homeroom teachers in flag salute activities.
Teacher quota does not include part-time classes
Regarding the issue of calculating the number of teachers in class, teachers at Hung Binh Primary School and some other schools in Vinh city are concerned,Vinh City Department of Education and Traininghas responded in writing. Ms. Hoang Phuong Thao - Head of the City's Department of Education and Training also said that currently, many schools are concerned because in reality, although the regulation requires each primary school teacher to teach 23 periods/week, there are currently many teachers who are holding concurrent positions such as homeroom teacher, group leader, deputy group leader, union president... will be deducted some periods according to the regulation.
However, based on the Consolidated Document 03/VBHN - BGD DT dated June 23, 2017, Circular promulgating regulations on working regime for general teachers and based on the current actual situation, the City Education Department has guided how to calculate the actual number of teaching periods of each teacher to ensure 23 periods/week. For concurrent periods, if they are considered as extra hours, the unit will pay from the budget according to the instructions of Joint Circular No. 07/2013/TTLT - BGD DT - BNV - BTC dated March 8, 2013, guiding the implementation of the overtime pay regime for teachers in public educational institutions.
Discussing further with Nghe An Newspaper on this issue, Mr. Thai Van Thanh - Director of the Department of Education and Training expressed his agreement with the way of calculating the actual teaching hours of teachers not including the part-time hours of Vinh city.
The regulations on the number of periods per week for general education teachers are clearly defined by the Ministry of Education and Training for each level of primary, secondary and high school. The actual number of periods taught, along with the size of students and schools, are also the basis for the education sector and related agencies to calculate the teacher staffing standards for schools.
Therefore, part-time classes such as homeroom teacher, professional group leader, union, team, school psychology counselor, etc. cannot be included in actual teaching classes because they depend on each school, each different educational program, and not all teachers have part-time jobs.
In addition, the task of this part-time class is not fixed but depends on each time and educational stage. For example, some schools have psychological counseling activities, but some do not. Or teachers do union and association work this year but change positions next school year. Therefore, part-time classes cannot be included in calculating the teacher staffing quota.
Mr. Thai Van Thanh - Director of Department of Education and Training
The head of the education sector also said that in recent years, there has been a shortage of primary school teachers in many localities across the country, including Nghe An. Therefore, in many units, the situation of teachers having to teach extra hours is quite common, many teachers are teaching extra hours voluntarily because there is no source of income and no budget to pay.
For the remaining schools, due to limited budget conditions, they cannot calculate the payment for part-time classes according to regulations, but depend on each school's own budget, according to internal spending regulations. In that context, the education sector hopes that teachers will accompany, share and make efforts to overcome difficulties to accompany schools and students.
