This morning, the Department of Primary Education under the Department of Education and Training in Ho Chi Minh City, said that in the school year 2022-2023, the southern metropolis had 491 public primary schools and 77 non-public schools with a total of 663,426 students. According to the Primary School Charter, the city lacks 3,643 primary teachers with more than 1,700 classrooms.
According to a leader of the Primary Education Department, the southern largest city is currently short of 3,643 teachers, equivalent to 12.8 percent of the number of teachers required; thus, each teacher is now overloaded with work because they have to work double.
From the school year 2020-2021 up to now, 219 administrators and 2,483 teachers have their jobs for many reasons such as retirement, retirement, or death due to illness.
For the academic year 2022-2023 alone, many subjects have no teachers. The city needs to recruit 1,166 people, but only 662 teachers can be recruited; for instance, the city needs to recruit 233 art teachers but only 20 teachers applied for the post while only 31 music teachers applied for the job whereas the city lacked 231 teachers. Similarly, the city failed to reach its recruitment targets of 232 physical education teachers, 363 informatics teachers and 642 foreign language teachers because only 83, 41 and 165 respectively teachers wanted this job.
Currently, the demand for foreign language teachers is very high, but the number of recruits is only approximately 25 percent of the demand.
Regarding policies for teachers, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training acknowledged that primary school teachers ought to teach many subjects and concurrently hold many other positions in the school.
Meanwhile, the current regulations are 23 hours a week for primary school teachers, including homeroom teachers or subject teachers. In addition to teaching the main course, teachers also participate in many activities outside of class time, extracurricular activities for students, support for union activities, movements, or competitions in a school.
Especially, when starting the implementation of the 2018 General Education Program, teachers must teach two shifts a day which became compulsory; worse, the course is free of charge, making teachers unable to earn extra income.
As a result, the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City proposed policies to support teachers' income such as increasing the basic salary by 25 percent, and subsidies to encourage teachers with professional qualifications to work in public schools.
Particularly for newly-graduated teachers and newly recruited medical, clerical, accounting and library staff, they will receive additional income support for the first three years of work at the following levels including 100 percent of the monthly basic salary a person in the first year; 70 percent basic monthly salary a person in the second year and 50 percent basic monthly salary a person in the third year of teaching.
From the fourth year onwards, the salary regime will be implemented according to current regulations.
At the same time, the department also proposed that Ho Chi Minh City authorities should calculate the tuition fee for the second shift to raise teachers’ income. Accordingly, the tuition fee for the second session is calculated based on the reference tuition fees at the primary level.
