Creating groundbreaking policies for teachers

Presenting the bill, Minister Ministry of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son clearly stated that teachers' salary policy is prioritized.

Salaries must be sufficient to attract talent into education.

Accordingly, the basic salary according to the teacher salary scale is ranked highest in the administrative career salary scale system. Teachers are entitled to preferential allowances and other allowances depending on the nature of the job and the region as prescribed by law.

Teachers continue to receive seniority allowance until the salary policy under Resolution 27 is implemented. Teachers who are recruited and assigned a salary for the first time will have their salary increased by one level in the administrative career salary scale system.

Giving his opinion during the group discussion, Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung said that when their living conditions are guaranteed, teachers can feel secure in their work instead of “worrying about teaching extra classes and struggling to make a living”. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the issue of teachers’ salaries and allowances.

Delegate Pham Khanh Phong Lan (HCMC) suggested that there should be more policies to attract students to the teaching profession, as well as policies to support and reward teachers who are committed to the profession, especially teachers in remote areas.

And delegate Thai Van Thanh (Nghe An) proposes to clearly identify central and local resources to implement policies for teachers, ensuring the law is feasible, effective, and soon comes into life.

The bill's policy to attract teachers is necessary. However, delegate Pham Trong Nghia (Lang Son) clearly shows that the content of the draft law is still general. It is not really a breakthrough to create attraction, not convincing enough to attract highly qualified people, talented people and people to work in especially difficult areas.

Especially when only receiving priority in recruitment and allowances, incentives, but it is not clear what level of incentives, incentives, or salary and benefits are enjoyed?

"Without specific and clear policies, attracting teachers as the goal and desire of the draft law when proposing this regulation will be very difficult to implement," said Mr. Nghia.

In addition, the bill has not clarified what is considered a highly qualified person, a talented person, or a person with special abilities. Therefore, he proposed to clearly define these subjects to facilitate practical application.

Recruitment to avoid "surplus and shortage" of teachers

Draft Law on Teachers gives initiative to the industry education in recruiting and using teachers. In which, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs are the agencies in charge of developing strategies, projects, development plans, and total staffing of teachers under their management authority to submit to competent authorities for decision. 

Coordinate the number of teachers in public educational institutions according to the number assigned by competent authorities; educational management agencies or educational institutions take the lead in recruiting teachers.

Delegate Thai Van Thanh said that the above regulation creates favorable conditions for localities and educational institutions to proactively develop plans to develop the teaching staff from recruitment, evaluation, to human resource training.

Specifically, when the educational management agency is in charge of recruitment and staff management, it will proactively use, mobilize, rotate, and second to meet requirements.

He cited the reality that this district has a lot of surplus teachers but cannot transfer them to districts with shortages, because the industry is not assigned authority to manage the payroll.

“For a long time, we have been saying that the teaching staff is short about 120.000 people, of which 72.000 people have not been recruited. The reason for the slow recruitment is due to many layers, such as going through the internal affairs department, then back to the education department, then back to the internal affairs department, 3-4 rounds of slow recruitment, leading to the new school year starting but there are still no teachers,” Mr. Thanh said.

According to Mr. Thanh, if the above regulation is implemented, it will solve the current situation of local teacher surplus and shortage.

Vice Chairman of the Committee for Culture and Education Ta Van Ha also affirmed that teachers are special subjects that need attention to serve the cause of education and training development and high-quality human resources.

However, there is currently a local surplus or shortage of teachers, and teacher quotas are allocated according to local population. There is a surplus of teachers in big cities, but there is a shortage in disadvantaged areas. Teacher recruitment is still being carried out by the local internal affairs sector, so it cannot completely solve the problem of surplus or shortage of teachers.

Given the above reality, Mr. Ha proposed that teacher selection should be assigned to the local education sector. On the other hand, staff reduction should also be considered to ensure the best teaching quality.