A district lacks 82 English and IT teachers.

Speaking with VietNamNet , Mr. Pham Viet Phuc - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Ky Son district (Nghe An), said that the district is lacking more than 82 English and IT teachers in 47 schools, of which, primary schools are lacking 57 teachers and secondary schools are lacking 25 teachers.

“Facing the shortage of English and IT teachers, the district Department of Education and Training has arranged for teachers to teach in multiple schools. Specifically, each teacher is assigned to teach at two schools in one area. Regarding IT teaching, priority is given to Math teachers or culture teachers with IT certificates to teach at two levels,” Mr. Phuc shared.

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There is a large shortage of teachers in the mountainous district of Ky Son. Photo: Pham Phuc

According to Mr. Phuc, every year, Ky Son district organizes teacher recruitment. However, the rate of local people or people from other places coming to submit applications is low, not enough compared to the set target.

In the past 5 years, the rate of English and IT teachers who transferred their jobs out of the district is about 7 people. Most of the teachers working in Ky Son district are local people or have families staying there.

“The Department of Education has a plan to advise the District People’s Committee to recruit more teachers. In case we cannot recruit more IT teachers, we will propose funding and send cultural teachers to study IT to teach students,” Mr. Phuc said about the upcoming solution in the border district about 300km from Vinh City.

Mr. Lu Thanh Ha - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Que Phong district said that at the primary level, there is a shortage of 10 English teachers, while at the secondary level, the number of teachers is less. To solve the problem of lack of teachers, the Department of Education allows teachers to teach in inter-schools and contracts some outside teachers to teach.

“We are still waiting for students to return home after graduation to take the entrance exam. Many schools have faced many difficulties in the early years due to the lack of teachers. However, since allowing teachers to teach in inter-school settings and adding contracts, solving this problem has become easier,” Mr. Ha shared.

Proposal to add teachers

In the 2024-2025 school year, to ensure there are enough teachers in class according to regulations, the People's Committee of Nghe An province proposed that the Ministry of Home Affairs add 6,501 positions. Specifically, the position for preschool is 1,688 people, primary school is 2,692 people, secondary school is 1,795 people and high school is 326 people.

In early 2024, Nghe An had 1,418 schools at all four levels including preschool, primary, middle and high school, a decrease of 7 schools compared to the previous school year.

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Nghe An proposes the Ministry of Home Affairs to add 6,501 new positions for teachers. Photo: Pham Phuc

However, although the number of schools has decreased, the number of classes has increased at some levels. Specifically, the number of junior high schools has increased by 117 classes with more than 12,000 students, and the number of high schools has increased by 77 classes with more than 5,500 students. The total number of students in the province is now over 860,000.

According to statistics from the education sector as of May 2024, the total number of civil servants and contract workers working in educational institutions is 48,722. Of these, 337 are contract workers, including 118 in preschool, 86 in primary, and 133 in secondary.

Previously, in the two school years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, Nghe An province recruited 5,056 more teachers. However, teacher recruitment encountered many difficulties because some districts still had staff but had to streamline the staff according to the roadmap (reducing 10% in the period 2022-2026) so they could not recruit more. This made it difficult for many localities to balance the implementation of the staff streamlining target and solving the problem of teacher shortage.

Up to now, compared to the staffing standards for teachers/class and students/class according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, the number of educational staff in Nghe An province is still short of 6,721 staff.