How long will we have to wait for the teacher shortage to end?

There are ample reasons to wait for the teacher shortage to be resolved, while students cannot wait for a full complement of teachers to begin the new school year.

At the meeting to implement tasks for this school year, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also "impatiently" requested localities to explain why the whole country is short of more than 100,000 teachers, yet tens of thousands of teaching positions remain unfilled.

Observing the long-standing teacher shortage, even outsiders are filled with anxiety and questions. The 2018 General Education Curriculum Reform has completed its first cycle, and the first cohort of students has finished their high school graduation exams, yet the shortage of teachers for the new subjects has not been resolved but has worsened.

When the new general education program began, English became a compulsory subject from grade 3. A mountainous district in the north, almost completely lacking primary school English teachers, had to seek and received assistance for three years.

However, throughout those three school years, the local authorities didn't really try to solve the problem of teacher shortage. When the students graduated from primary school, the (newly established) communes would again request projects to help teach English for a few more years.

No one can guarantee whether or not we'll have teachers in a few years, or how we'll get them. Asking neighboring provinces for teacher assistance should only be a temporary solution for the first few years. Even if we have to contract teachers from elsewhere to teach online, as your school is doing, local resources must still be mobilized to demonstrate the local government's concern and proactive approach to education.

In Quang Ninh province , according to a recent statement from the head of the Department of Education and Training, there have been no teacher recruitment exams since 2021, even though the locality reports a shortage of approximately 4,000 teachers at all levels of education.

The Ministry of Education and Training itself, despite directly managing teacher training universities, has not been proactive in allocating quotas or commissioning the training of teachers for new subjects, leading to a severe shortage of qualified candidates in localities.

With the start of this school year also marking the implementation of a two-tiered local government system, eliminating the district level and the education department as before, the Ministry of Education and Training has issued numerous directives regarding teacher recruitment, proposing that the responsibility be assigned to the provincial Departments of Education and Training to proactively manage teacher shortages and surpluses.

However, most localities are still waiting for a more legally binding document from the Government and have not yet recruited teachers. Some localities, such as Nghe An, Ha Tinh, and Quang Tri, are impatient and have proactively advised and proposed ways to proceed.

The new school year cannot wait, and students cannot wait for enough teachers to start school. The government has repeatedly instructed that "wherever there are students, there must be teachers." Yet, localities are still waiting. Waiting for help from other schools, waiting for official documents, waiting for sources of teacher recruitment, waiting for allocated staff positions; and once allocated, they wait again to deduct the 10% annual staff reduction to avoid having to lay off anyone…

If we continue like this, the teacher shortage will never end.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/cho-den-bao-gio-moi-het-thieu-giao-vien-185250916000715201.htm