Removing 'bottlenecks' if the right to recruit teachers is given to the education sector?

One of the regulations considered a breakthrough in the draft Law on Teachers is to give the education sector the initiative in recruiting and using teachers instead of the internal affairs sector as it is currently.

Draft Law on Teachers proposes to delegate the right to recruit and employ teachers to the education sector.

In which, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs are the agencies in charge of developing strategies, projects, development plans, and total staffing of teachers under their management authority to submit to competent authorities for decision; promulgate recruitment criteria and standards, pedagogical practice content in teacher recruitment exams and selection; and coordinate the staffing of teachers in public educational institutions according to the number assigned by competent authorities.

Education management agencies take the lead (or delegate authority to educational institutions) to recruit, mobilize, arrange, evaluate, and appoint teachers. The draft law stipulates that the appointment is advised, decided, or recognized by the education management agency in accordance with the assigned authority.

Congestion

Professor Thai Van Thanh, member of the National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Education and Director of the Nghe An Department of Education and Training, said that the provisions in the draft Law on Teachers are consistent with Vietnam's practical conditions. In reality, the education sector is not in charge of recruiting and employing teachers. This leads to bottlenecks.

According to Mr. Thanh, the reason why the country is currently short of about 120,000 teachers, of which 72,000 are not yet recruited, and the recruitment process is slow "is because we have many stages and many layers, leading to a "blockage".

In addition, the fact that the education sector is not proactive in managing the payroll also makes it impossible for the sector to develop a plan for the development of the teaching staff. When there is a plan for the development of the teaching staff, it will be possible to identify the source of input for teacher training, attract excellent high school students, good students who love teaching to study pedagogy; or implement Decree 116 on tuition and living expenses support for pedagogical students. For a long time, the education sector has had difficulty implementing this because when training and ordering pedagogical students to graduate, the payroll is not controlled.

With the right to actively recruit and use teachers, the education sector can transfer teachers from one educational institution or, in short, from one school to another, from one district to another and from one province to another. This is something that the education sector cannot do at present.

Professor Thai Van Thanh

“If we hand it over to the internal affairs department, it will be confined to each district. Even within a province, one district may have a surplus of subject teachers and another lacks them, but they cannot be mobilized,” Mr. Thanh acknowledged.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa, Vice Chairwoman of the National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Education, also evaluated the draft. This provision is indeed one of the new points, different from the provisions in the Law on Civil Servants and other current related laws. This can be considered a reasonable solution to remove some shortcomings and obstacles in the current practice of teacher management when the Ministry of Education and Training only has the right to manage teachers professionally; it does not manage the number, payroll, recruitment and appointment of teachers.

Family increase professional and quality factors in recruitment

The agency drafting the Teachers Law believes that if this regulation is passed, the education sector will There is initiative in recruiting, using and developing the teaching staff because there are strong enough legal sanctions to remove bottlenecks in recruiting and using teachers in the past; there is a mechanism to attract good people to the teaching profession and retain good teachers in the profession. From there, improve the quality of the education system on the basis of standardizing the quality of the teaching staff.

Along with that, the regulations on teacher recruitment in the draft law set out a number of requirements to meet the professional characteristics of teachers, which are different from civil servants in other sectors and fields, and different from pure workers.

In particular, an important adjustment in teacher recruitment is: recruitment method through selection or examination, in which there must be pedagogical practice. According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the requirement to recruit teachers to have pedagogical practice will help increase the professional quality of those recruited as teachers, selecting the right people for the profession.

Sharing with the press about this content, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said that shifting the state management mindset on teachers to a human resource management model is an urgent requirement, especially in the current period, when education is facing the requirements of fundamental and comprehensive innovation.

The Law on Teachers will be a consistent, effective and efficient legal framework for creating and developing the teaching staff. In particular, the subject of state management of teachers is emphasized on the responsibility of the education sector and is specifically decentralized from the ministry to departments, offices and educational institutions.

“The orientation when building the Law on Teachers is to increase the professional and quality factors in both the training and recruitment of teachers. This helps management become tighter and more substantial, and teachers feel more comfortable and free in their professional activities and have more conditions to develop themselves and contribute to the profession,” said Minister Son.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/thao-diem-nghen-neu-giao-quyen-tuyen-dung-nha-giao-cho-nganh-giao-duc-185241120003522883.htm