The Ministry of Education and Training has just organized a training course on teaching integrated subjects of Natural Sciences, History and Geography, experiential activities, and career guidance for managers and teachers nationwide.
Deputy Minister of Education and Training Pham Ngoc Thuong said that 2023-2024 is the third school year in which the education sector has implemented teaching of Natural Sciences, History and Geography, and Career Guidance Experience Activities at secondary school level. "This is new and difficult content, while the conditions of regions and localities are different in terms of facilities and teaching staff, so it is inevitable that there will be difficulties, obstacles, and confusion," he said.
The conference was held in a combination of in-person and online formats to 63 provinces and cities.
According to Deputy Minister Pham Ngoc Thuong, in order to better implement teaching and learning of subjects and educational activities at schools, the functional units under the Ministry need to continue to listen to opinions from the grassroots to advise and direct. From there, solutions will be found to overcome difficulties, replicate good models, and promptly handle negligent units.
Mr. Thuong also emphasized that managers play an important role and need to direct with a strong spirit, clearly understand the current situation, and find solutions to promptly resolve problems and avoid delays. Localities need to be proactive, flexible, and creative, but ensure that they are scientific, reasonable, and closely follow the Ministry's programs and requirements, and are suitable for practical conditions.
According to the Deputy Minister, training and development is a continuous process, associated with short-term and long-term goals, of strategic importance with the motto of focusing the highest attention on the teaching staff.
At the training session, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Director of the Department of Secondary Education, pointed out the difficulties in implementing and teaching integrated subjects in localities due to lack of teachers, lack of equipment and experimental materials, confusion in organizing activities, organizing assessment and testing, and financial difficulties.
The department head analyzed that currently the teacher structure is not uniform among the sub-subjects to ensure proper teaching of the subject. Some teachers still lack experience in teaching integrated subjects or are not fully trained, qualified, and confident enough to teach the topics in the subject program.
In some places, teachers have not been trained in integrated teaching of Natural Sciences, History and Geography, so they have difficulty in teaching (such as Long An, Tien Giang, Soc Trang, Quang Tri, Bac Lieu, Kon Tum).
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Director of Secondary Education Department.
Some localities do not have teachers trained in vocational guidance activities (such as Long An, Tien Giang, Soc Trang, Quang Tri, Dak Nong).
"The lack of teachers makes it difficult for schools to arrange and organize their timetables. If we arrange to teach parallel knowledge streams to stabilize the number of periods/week for teachers, the topics may be disrupted, which is not in line with the spirit of integrated subjects because the program is designed according to logical knowledge streams," Mr. Thanh emphasized.
He also assessed that the organization and implementation of activities are not yet consistent between the direction of the Ministry of Education and Training and the guidance of the textbook authors on Career Guidance Experience Activities, so managers and teachers face difficulties.
At the same time, the number of periods to calculate the norm for teachers increased, while the teacher payroll remained unchanged, and there was no budget to pay teachers overtime. Schools and teachers were also confused when determining the content of the topics according to the type of flag-raising activities; how to organize at one time for many classes, many grades; how to calculate periods, and the regime for teachers to implement.
In addition, organizing and evaluating students' learning outcomes is difficult because the curriculum is taught by topics, so some subjects are taught in the first half of the semester and tested at the end of the semester, so students' knowledge is not continuous.
Faced with the above difficulties, the Director of the Department of Secondary Education proposed solutions to support localities and educational institutions.
Specifically, with integration, schools assign teachers with professional competence appropriate to the teaching content (according to the main content of the subject program or according to topics).
The Ministry of Education and Training encourages the assignment of professionally trained teachers to teach two streams of content or the entire subject program, but this must be done step by step, ensuring the requirements of professional capacity and the confidence and readiness of teachers to ensure teaching quality.
The construction of a teaching plan is organized flexibly in terms of time and timing for implementing major content circuits of the program or topics within each major content circuit of the program. In particular, arranging the timetable does not overload teachers and ensures that the content taught before is the basis for the content taught after.
For experiential and career guidance activities, schools need to develop educational plans for each topic. The timetable is flexible, and it is not mandatory to implement topics in order in the textbook, avoiding overloading teachers at the time of implementing the assigned topics...
Ha Cuong
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