When the new school year has been going on for 2 months, the story of teacher shortage has been mentioned again and has become a problem in many localities, even Thanh Hoa has had to stop some subjects because there are no teachers to teach.

Before solving the problem of teacher shortage, let's think about solutions to recruit enough teachers, and more importantly, recruit really good teachers.

In my opinion, when making a recruitment plan, the school needs to base it on some requirements such as: Actual situation, human resources that can be recruited.

About the actual situation:

Let me give you some examples from life:

I have a friend in Hanoi. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Natural Sciences, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, with an average degree. With this level, he could not take the civil service exam of the Department of Education and Training, so he chose to become a Math tutor.

Thanks to his mindset, being trained in a good environment, and having a heart, he gradually became a famous Math tutor in Hanoi, with a very high income. He even bought several houses and sent his children to study abroad in the US since high school.

Obviously, the market decides everything. He has earned a high income for many years with his own ability, so he must be good. However, he will be eliminated from the "first round" because he does not meet the criteria to apply, let alone be recruited into the capital's education sector.

The second example is about education in my hometown Bac Ninh. Bac Ninh is often at the top of the country in terms of education quality, as evidenced by the results of the high school graduation exam in recent years. The high school where I work is one of the top schools in Bac Ninh in terms of education quality. However, none of the teachers at my school graduated from university with honors or won an Olympic prize.

These two examples show that it is not necessary to graduate with excellent university degrees and win high awards to be a competent teacher. A good teacher needs many other factors besides professional competence.

Journalist Thomas Friedman wrote very correctly in his famous book The World is Flat : "When we leave high school, we will not remember who helped us solve a difficult problem, but often only remember the person who guided us to solve that problem." In addition, we teachers always remember the saying of American writer William A. Warrd: "The average teacher only knows how to talk. The good teacher only knows how to explain. The outstanding teacher knows how to illustrate. The great teacher knows how to inspire...".

About the human resources that can be recruited:

Observing the education situation in our country, everyone can easily see that only in recent years, many talented people have chosen to study pedagogy.

At schools that provide good teachers such as Pedagogical University, Natural Science University... students often have to study very seriously. Especially with natural science majors, the amount of knowledge is large and difficult, so the number of students graduating with good or excellent grades is often rare. Recruiting such candidates is difficult because they are often retained as lecturers, or "hunted" by famous private schools or schools with foreign elements.

Nowadays, many of the world's leading technology companies recruit candidates without a degree, only care about whether they can do the job. If you set criteria for candidates to have this degree or that award, you will inadvertently eliminate those who can do the job right from the start.

How to recruit good teachers

Teachers need to be good but practical. I would like to share a simple and effective recruitment method that has been applied by a famous private high school in Hanoi for quite a long time: Allowing all high school math teachers, regardless of their average, good, excellent or excellent degrees, to apply, as long as they have graduated from a relevant major.

Candidates take the high school graduation exam in Math in recent years like a normal student. If they score 8 points or higher, they pass round 1. In round 2, candidates are assigned to teach 2 periods for a class. If 80% or more of the students in the class rate the teacher as good, the candidate passes round 2 - and is recruited.

With this method, for many years, the school has always recruited teachers with good professional qualifications and high pedagogical skills, and thanks to that, the high school graduation exam scores of students are always among the top in the capital.

We can refer to the above method to replicate. It is necessary to be flexible to recruit high-quality human resources for the education sector. Besides, the recruitment process must be public, widespread and transparent.

In fact, in March, the Ministry of Education and Training proposed that localities lacking teachers could recruit college graduates to teach certain subjects. This openness and flexibility from the governing body could very well help the education sector address the teacher shortage and recruit many talented people.

The article represents the author's personal views. Readers who have comments on this issue can send them to email: [email protected]. Thank you!
With a serious shortage of teachers, Thanh Hoa is recruiting 136 positions with strict criteria . The People's Committee of Thanh Hoa province has just issued a document approving the plan to recruit public high school teachers with 136 positions.