Increase salaries to improve the lives of teachers

Teachers' salaries and professional allowances have been discussed for a long time, and have been included in Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW dated November 4, 2013 of the 11th Central Executive Committee, but have yet to be put into practice. How to attract talented people to pedagogy and teachers to truly make a living from their profession is still an unsolved concern.

The information that teachers at Ngo Thoi Nhiem Primary, Secondary and High School (with 2 campuses in Ho Chi Minh City and 1 campus in Binh Duong) receive an average salary of more than 30 million VND/month has attracted many people's attention. Of which, the teacher with the highest salary is 60.7 million VND/month and the lowest is 14 million VND/month. This school has more than 400 teachers, of which 98.5% are permanent teachers, teaching nearly 10,000 students at all levels.

Mr. Tuong Nguyen Su - Principal of the school said that every year, the school increases teachers' salaries by about 10%, while tuition fees increase by 3-5%. To retain teachers, in addition to higher salaries than the average, the school also focuses on building policies on the working environment, benefits, trust, and mutual respect. The school also arranges housing for employees in need. Policies such as loan support, upgrading standards to PhD, Master, support from about 50-100% depending on each person's goals, Tet holiday bonuses, and labor competitions to attract teachers.

Although it is impossible to compare public and private schools in terms of teachers' salaries, it is clear that when receiving the above information, many public teachers feel sad because even though they have decades of experience with many emulation titles and efforts every year, they still cannot reach the lowest salary of a private school.

National Assembly Delegate Tran Van Thuc (Thanh Hoa Delegation) cited the Summary Report on the implementation of the law on teachers attached to the draft law dossier as well as voters' opinions and social assessments, showing that: The salary and preferential allowances of teachers (especially preschool and general education teachers) are currently lower than the salaries of officials, civil servants in other sectors and especially officials of mass organizations in the same area. The salary and preferential allowances of teachers are not commensurate with their professional activities, not enough to meet the needs of social security, not enough to ensure the standard of living, especially for young teachers, new to the profession and living in the delta and urban areas. "Income pressure is one of the reasons leading to the situation of not being able to attract talented people to the teaching profession, localities lack recruitment sources to supplement the shortage of teachers and prepare teams to implement the new textbook program..." - Mr. Thuc said.

The draft Law on Teachers continues to propose that "teachers' salaries are given the highest priority in the administrative salary scale system" according to the content stated in Resolution 29-NQ/TW on fundamental and comprehensive innovation in education and training, and was recently reiterated in Conclusion 91-KL/TW of the Politburo. Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son frankly said: "When proposing salary policy in the draft Law on Teachers, we also want to emphasize that this is necessary and needs to be calculated. From a certain perspective, it is also necessary to recognize that in the recent past, although not much has been done, with two adjustments to the basic salary level, the lives of teachers have also improved a step, bringing teachers a lot of encouragement".

The Minister also pointed out the difficulties in the past time, although there have been changes, we have not basically implemented much in terms of salary policy for teachers. Teachers are in large numbers, with over 1 million people receiving salaries from the State budget. Therefore, although we are really concerned, to realize this concern, we still have to balance the state budget that can be paid. Our country has just escaped poverty not long ago, the need for resources for national development is still very high and workers in general still have many difficulties, not just the teaching staff. Therefore, although there is a very clear direction, to implement it, it will require more appropriate calculations of resources.

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/tang-luong-de-cai-thien-doi-song-doi-ngu-nha-giao-10295589.html