Why is there a problem in converting professional activities into teaching hour norms?

GD&TĐ - The Ministry of Education and Training has issued Circular 05/2025/TT-BGDĐT (Circular 05), guiding the conversion of other professional activities into teaching periods.

However, many schools still face difficulties in the implementation process, despite restructuring professional teams to reduce the number of teachers' concurrent duties as well as limit the number of converted periods.

Get the hardware right

Hung Vuong Primary School (Hai Chau, Da Nang ), after reorganization, has 3 professional groups, reducing the number of group leaders from 5 to 3 and 2 deputy group leaders. Ms. Do Thi Le - Principal said: "With 16 classes, the school combines teachers of grades 1 and 2 into one group. Group 3 includes homeroom teachers of grade 3 and teachers of Music, Fine Arts, and English. Group 4 includes homeroom teachers of grades 4-5 and IT teachers".

According to Ms. Le, merging groups must ensure that it does not affect professional activities, not mechanically, so the above plan is optimal. Regarding the organization of tutoring for students whose final semester study results are not at the level according to the education plan, the school assigns responsibility to professional groups to take the initiative in organizing the plan.

“Depending on the number of students, the group can choose to open a tutoring class for the whole grade or the homeroom teacher can take on extra tutoring for the students in their class. However, the school has not yet planned to convert the number of tutoring hours because it depends on the students' learning progress. To convert to calculate teaching hours for teachers, the school will make a proposal to pay for extra hours,” said Ms. Le.

The Board of Directors of Tran Cao Van High School (Tam Ky, Da Nang) has reviewed positions to meet the requirement that teachers do not hold more than two concurrent positions.

“The school has implemented the hardware in accordance with Circular 05, so there are some adjustments in the school plan. Accordingly, previously, the training work for the 12th grade team to compete in the provincial excellent student competition, the school conducted a minimum of 70 periods, with some subjects up to 90 periods, not to mention the teachers in charge of the teams who could proactively teach extra hours. But according to Circular 05, the maximum is only 50 periods, significantly reducing the number of periods for training excellent students. This is also a disadvantage for the team in charge of training students for the team,” Mr. Pham Hung - Vice Principal of the school analyzed.

Tran Cao Van High School currently has 3 Geography teachers, so to ensure enough teaching hours as well as the number of converted hours for professional activities, the school does not assign the position of homeroom teacher or teaching local education subjects or experiential activities. However, according to Mr. Pham Hung, in the plan to convert the number of teaching hours to train excellent students for grade 12, there are still some hours that exceed the standard and will be resolved by calculating overtime pay for teachers.

Duc Pho High School No. 2 (Khanh Cuong Commune, Quang Ngai ) currently has to calculate overtime for History - Geography teachers after converting professional activities into periods and reducing teaching periods for part-time teachers.

Teachers of Hung Vuong Primary School participate in training on the Green - Clean - Healthy School program to prepare for the 2025 - 2026 school year. Photo: NTCC

Need to change teacher/class ratio

According to Mr. Pham Hung, the plan to convert professional activities into teaching periods of Tran Cao Van High School is only a plan, awaiting detailed instructions from management agencies.

Meanwhile, Duc Pho High School No. 2 is applying a payment regime for teaching hours to foster excellent students according to the expenditure level of Resolution 17/2023 of the People's Council of Quang Ngai province.

“Teachers participating in training and coaching for teams competing in competitions for excellent students, Phu Dong sports competitions, national defense and security competitions, etc. are entitled to the spending level according to Resolution 17/2023, so they are not converted into the number of periods to reduce. Therefore, although there is still a shortage of teachers in some subjects, when implementing the conversion, the school does not encounter many difficulties or problems when having to solve the problem of overtime,” Principal Thach Canh Be shared.

According to Ms. Do Thi Le's explanation, when converting professional activities into teaching periods, the number of periods in schools will increase. "However, the current teaching quota assigned by the Ministry of Home Affairs to schools is still based on old regulations, only meeting 1.5 teachers/class. Meanwhile, if calculated based on the total number of converted periods, the teacher ratio must be increased to 1.67 - 1.8 to avoid having to arrange for additional teaching or contract more people. Not to mention that schools that have enough assigned staff quota cannot contract more teachers," Ms. Le analyzed.

From there, Ms. Le suggested that if schools do not add teachers to meet the professional assignment according to Circular 05, there must be a financial solution to pay for overtime teaching. Schools are confused because the number of assigned staff has not increased, and the salary budget is also at the old rate.

Therefore, when paying overtime to teachers, it is necessary to submit a report to the relevant agencies and then use the annual budget for other expenses to pay. Therefore, many schools are waiting for detailed instructions from the Department of Education and Training to have a legal basis for implementation.

Sharing the same opinion, Mr. Thach Canh Be added: “There will be a situation where school leaders convert teachers who do not have enough hours compared to the norm. If so, it will be difficult to ensure harmony and uniformity in evaluating teachers' work performance.”

“There are professional activities that only take place in a few periods or one session, so schools do not know how to convert. Not to mention, during the school year, schools have many competitions, so how are teachers who participate in the judging panel calculated?

These need general guidance from education management agencies for unified implementation to ensure the rights of teachers as well as schools have enough basis to implement," said Ms. Do Thi Le - Principal of Hung Vuong Primary School (Hai Chau, Da Nang).

Source: https://giaoducthoidai.vn/quy-doi-hoat-dong-chuyen-mon-thanh-dinh-muc-tiet-day-vuong-mac-do-dau-post749029.html