Teachers need to constantly innovate and push the limits.

Identifying the spirit of innovation in the next stage as the in-depth innovation of the teaching force itself, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son shared about the strategy and development orientation in the new year 2025.

Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son.

- In 2021, the Minister once said that the education and training sector holds everything except two things: teachers and finance. How has the Ministry of Education and Training solved this difficult problem over the years?

State management of teachers is an important content, throughout the process of developing the teaching staff, from the time they first enter the profession, develop their career, until they retire. Therefore, management needs a suitable specialized legal framework, in which teachers can see their profession, mission, and development path, only then can they bring success to learners and meet the expectations of society.

In recent years, the Ministry of Education and Training has focused on developing strategies, projects, and plans to develop the total number of teachers under its management; coordinating staff in public schools according to the assigned number;educational management agencies or schools play a leading role in recruiting, using, and managing teachers and promoting decentralization and delegation of authority to localities.

Innovation in State management thinking on teachers is an urgent requirement, especially in the current period, when education is facing fundamental and comprehensive innovation requirements, entering a new era.

The Draft Law on Teachers submitted by the Government to the National Assembly at the 8th Session (November 2024) is expected to create a consistent, effective, and efficient legal framework for creating and developing the teaching staff. In particular, the State management of teachers is emphasized on the responsibility of the Education and Training sector and is decentralized vertically, from ministries to departments, offices, and educational institutions, with professional factors and teacher quality being the top priority in training and recruitment.

We hope that State management of teachers is built on professional and quality factors, aiming at tighter and more substantial management, and teachers feel comfortable and free when doing their jobs.

In addition, the current management of teachers is based on the Law on Civil Servants, which means that recruitment and management are similar to other civil servants. The Ministry of Education and Training only manages professional skills, not quantity, payroll, recruitment, and appointment. This leads to difficulties in developing separate, flexible policies to meet the specific needs of the Education and Training sector.

I hope the Law on Teachers will be passed soon to clear up bottlenecks in the organization and management of teachers, returning decision-making power to the education sector.

Minister Nguyen Kim Son talks with students.

- How has the issue of increasing income and ensuring living standards for teachers been resolved in recent years, sir?

Currently, there are about 1.6 million teachers at all levels of education in both the public and private sectors. The teaching staff includes about 6,000 professors and associate professors, nearly 60,000 people with doctoral degrees, over 600 People's Teachers and 10,000 Excellent Teachers.

The current teaching force is passionate about their profession, loves their students, strives to cultivate themselves, and devotes themselves to the cause of educating people. Many teachers sacrifice their youth, stay in remote areas, and bring knowledge to children. However, low salaries, not enough to cover living expenses, have caused many to want to quit their jobs and have quit. Those who remain in the profession are having to work many extra jobs to make a living.

Each teacher has a different salary coefficient depending on their level, rank, and seniority. After the basic salary increase from July 1, 2024, teachers will receive 4.9 - 15.87 million VND/month, excluding allowances. Of which, preschool teachers grade III are the group with the lowest salary, from 4.9 to more than 11.4 million VND/month. Primary, secondary and high school teachers grade I receive the highest. People with a salary coefficient of 6.78 receive a salary of nearly 16 million VND/month.

Statistics show that newly-entered preschool and primary school teachers (grade III, level 1) only receive 6.6 - 7.4 million VND/month, including allowances. This level is lower than the average income of workers nationwide in the third quarter of 2024 (7.6 million VND). To receive a fixed salary of 10 million VND, teachers must have dedicated about 19 years in the profession. The income of trainee, probationary and contract teachers is much lower.

I think teachers do not expect any special treatment, they just need to be paid properly for their work and ensure a minimum living standard, not too difficult.

The Government and the Ministry of Education and Training have repeatedly proposed to prioritize teachers' salary policies. In particular, the basic salary according to the teachers' salary table is ranked highest in the administrative and career salary scale system; receiving preferential allowances and other allowances depending on the nature of the job and the working area. Teachers continue to receive seniority allowances until the salary policy according to Resolution 27 of the Central Committee is implemented.

Teaching is not designed to make money but to serve society, taking the development of students as the success of the profession. They are receiving less than the labor they contribute. But teachers also need to be paid at a level that ensures the minimum needs of the family, the regeneration of labor and enough to raise children. With the current salary, public school teachers are struggling to make a living. Therefore, we hope that the National Assembly will consider prioritizing the teaching profession, given the importance of the products they create for society.

- One of the great motivations for teachers to stick with their profession and love their profession is status and honor. What has the Ministry of Education and Training done, is doing, and will do to continue to improve the status of teachers in the current context?

In recent times, the Law on Education and the Law on Higher Education have created an important legal basis for industry governance and innovation in the field of education and training. With the draft Law on Teachers being submitted to the National Assembly for its first comments, we hope that the policies mentioned in the law, when passed and implemented in practice, will be an important tool for developing the teaching force.

I would like to express my pride in the efforts and dedication of the teachers. The teachers are very good at their profession, dedicated to their profession, working with all their strength, intelligence and affection for the students.

I hope teachers will continue to demonstrate dynamism, creativity, and responsibility to multiply more good things, and thus society will recognize us more.

- Vietnam is entering a new era, an era of strong growth. What requirements does the education and training sector have for teachers to ensure increasingly high quality human resources?

For a country to develop rapidly and have high income, it needs high-quality human resources with good qualities, good skills, good foreign languages, especially human resources for key science and technology sectors, new technologies, bringing position and competitive advantage to the country in the international arena. This is a big and difficult requirement for the Education and Training sector.

However, I believe that the greater the challenge, the more changes, the more new things are introduced, the more education needs to return to consolidating and equipping learners with the most basic and fundamental things; firmly cultivating the most core values ​​of education: love, honesty, kindness and beauty, in addition to the new abilities and skills of the times.

Old qualities, new skills, new thinking, more foreign language tools, digital tools are things that we teachers need to grasp firmly. Educational innovation in the next stage is essentially innovation in depth of the teaching force itself. The limits of teachers are the limits of education, the limits of education are the limits of a country's development. We teachers need to turn the limits into limitless.

"The rise and fall of a nation is the responsibility of the intellectuals", when the country has the opportunity to prosper, the intellectuals have a great responsibility. We, teachers and intellectuals, absolutely need to answer the question: how to respond to the trust, confidence and responsibility of the Party, the State and the People? The repayment of intellectuals has always been and should be in the spirit of "the debt of gratitude to the country must be repaid with the whole river".

In recent directives, General Secretary To Lam once again affirmed the role of teachers as "the locomotive of education", the most important force determining the quality of human resources. Therefore, I hope that traditional values ​​such as "learning without boredom, teaching without fatigue", the spirit of tolerance, altruism, sacrifice, and the profound love for humanity of each teacher will always be maintained.

Thank you, Minister!

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/bo-truong-gd-dt-giao-vien-can-khong-ngung-doi-moi-vuot-gioi-han-ar923037.html