What to do when the commune lacks educational staff?

After the administrative unit merger, thousands of communes and wards lacked specialized education staff, which was predictable. It is time to change the management model, empower schools and establish a community monitoring mechanism.

Parents and students enrolling at Nguyen An Ninh High School (Vuon Lai Ward, Ho Chi Minh City) on the morning of July 8 - Photo: NHU HUNG

One possible direction is to move to a school-based management model - an approach that has been adopted by many countries in education and public administration reform.

The core spirit of this model is to give schools more real autonomy - not only in terms of expertise, finance, and personnel - but also to allow schools to proactively organize activities suitable to the local context. At that time, the role of the commune level shifts from management to support, connection, and supervision.

Instead of relying on school boards, a more flexible monitoring mechanism can be built from the community - with the participation of parents, mass organizations and retired officials with educational experience.

This helps create an environment of transparency, promotes accountability and increases social acceptance of the school.

When empowered, the principal and school staff will develop their administrative capacity - something that was bureaucratized in the old model.

The Ministry of Education and Training's organization of training, development of handbooks and mobilization of teachers to support commune level are very necessary temporary measures. But in the long term, the management model needs to be changed.

A two-way roadmap is needed: one is to review Decree 155/2025/ND-CP and standardize the job positions and capacity of commune-level education staff according to the role of connection and supervision; two is to retrain the team of principals and school managers to act as the center for operating the school-based management model, accompanied by a clear mechanism of autonomy and social supervision.

School-based management is not only a technical option for educational management. It is also an approach consistent with the spirit of institutional reform, streamlining the apparatus and promoting the role of the community.

When schools are empowered, communes are relieved of their burden, and people are involved in monitoring, the education system will operate more effectively and adaptively.

TS HOANG NGOC VINH

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/can-lam-gi-khi-xa-phuong-thieu-can-bo-giao-duc-20250804222213615.htm