Quang Ninh lacks thousands of teachers in the new school year

Shortage of nearly 4,000 educational staff

At the regular press conference on September 9, Mr. Trinh Dinh Hai, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Quang Ninh province, said that according to the staffing plan, the whole province is currently short of about 4,000 managers, teachers and staff at all levels. Of these, the teaching staff alone is short of about 2,700 people, including 2,200 in public schools and about 500 in private schools.

The story is not just about numbers. In Hai Lang commune, in the 2025-2026 school year, the Primary School is still short of 1 cultural teacher; the Secondary School is short of 6 staff (including 1 administrator, 4 subject teachers, 1 school health worker).

Dong Rui Primary and Secondary School also lacks one junior high school teacher and one administrative staff. This shortage makes teaching assignments difficult and even affects student health care, a crucial factor in the educational environment.

Teacher Le Thi Mai Linh, a teacher at Dao Tran, takes care of students before the opening day.

Not only Hai Lang, in Dong Ngu commune, most schools have no source of contract recruitment, especially for subjects that require meeting the requirements of the 2018 General Education Program such as English and Information Technology. Each secondary school block has only one class, but the lack of subject teachers often causes the organization of teaching and learning to rotate, even cutting down on regular school hours.

Difficult knots to untie

The Quang Ninh Education sector is not without effort. Every year, the province has 200-300 pedagogical students graduating, but this number is not enough to make up for the shortage, not to mention that most of the good students are concentrated in favorable places. Meanwhile, mountainous, border and island areas with socio-economic difficulties have even more difficulty attracting teachers.

The geographical conditions, the scattered population, the differences in education and living standards between regions make the human resource problem even more complicated. After implementing the 2-level government model, some legal regulations on decentralization and delegation of power are not unified, leading to initial difficulties in regulating and allocating educational human resources.

Quang Ninh is currently short of about 4,000 administrators, teachers and staff at all levels.

Another reason comes from the changes in the 2018 General Education Program. With many new subjects and high requirements for professional standards, the number of job positions has increased significantly. Meanwhile, additional training has not kept up. Subjects such as Foreign Languages, Information Technology, Music, Fine Arts, Physical Education, National Defense Education, Security... are mostly seriously lacking teachers.

To respond promptly, the Quang Ninh Department of Education has increased the recruitment of labor contracts. For high school level alone, the Department of Education and Training has recruited 71 positions (64 teachers, 7 staff) for 30 public schools.

The sector also considers mobilizing and seconding teachers from areas with surplus to areas with shortage; arranging teachers to teach between schools and communes; encouraging voluntary transfers. Increasing teaching hours in schools with shortages. Initially, some schools have experimented with applying artificial intelligence to teaching to reduce pressure but it cannot completely replace the role of teachers.

Regarding the teaching staff alone, Quang Ninh is still short of about 2,700 people, including 2,200 in public schools and about 500 in private schools.

However, to fundamentally overcome this problem, Quang Ninh needs strong enough policies to attract, retain and develop the team. This could be a special incentive mechanism for teachers in difficult areas. Housing and travel support policies or training and retraining programs to meet new subject requirements. More importantly, the province needs to have a long-term plan linked to the strategy for education and training development and local human resource development.