In the new school year of 2022-2023, Thu Duc City needs 22 Music teachers, but only 3 have been selected so far. Similarly, compared to the demand of 24 Arts teachers, Thu Duc City can only hire 3. In the list of 69 successful teacher candidates in District 4, only 1 is a Music teacher. Phu Nhuan District has to employ 2 Arts teachers for the new school year, but it sees none in its list of successful teacher candidates. Other areas like District 3, District 8, Tan Binh District are posting from 8-38 job vacancies for Arts and Music teachers now for both the primary and secondary levels.
Being the first year running the new 2018 General Education program for grade 10, HCMC needs 30 teachers for Arts and Music subjects. However, after the first round of testing general knowledge and foreign language performance, only 3 teachers passed to enter the second round of testing the professional skills.
To temporarily address this shortage, Principal of Trung Vuong Senior High School in District 1 shared that her school will sign contracts with visiting Arts teachers. She and other principals are considering the method of sharing Arts and Music teachers among schools in the same group to serve the demands of students.
Deputy Director of the HCMC Education and Training Department informed that this department has signed contracts with Sai Gon University and HCMC University of Education to train more teachers for the two subjects, while asking the Education and Training Divisions in all 21 districts and Thu Duc City to recommend suitable Arts and Music teachers for needy senior high schools in the city to urgently address the demand in the upcoming academic year.
As to hiring a teacher to teach Arts and Music in many schools at the same time, there must be adjustments in current policies in the aspects of management, minimum number of teaching periods per semester, which is rather complicated. The measures of signing contracts with visiting teachers or allowing junior high teachers to teach in senior high level seem more practical.
Regarding the reason for this Arts and Music teacher shortage in senior high level, most of these teachers just own an associate’s degree, so they do not meet the criteria to participate in the employment process. In addition, before the 2018 General Education program, Arts and Music in senior high level are taught in extra-curriculum clubs rather than in formal lessons, leading to a low demand of teachers.
Even when the new education program is in operation, there is no high need of students to receive deep training in Arts and Music. This means limited income for teachers of these subjects, greatly discouraging them to pursue their career.
Therefore, developing suitable policies to train and then retain Arts and Music teachers is a tough challenge to the city management for a more stable training program for students in HCMC.
