The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has completed and sent to the Ministry of Justice for appraisal the draft Decree detailing a number of articles of the Law on Teachers. One of the notable contents of the draft is the new regulations on teacher recruitment, aiming to remove prolonged "bottleneck" in practice, while ensuring the correct recruitment of people and jobs for the Education sector.
Many inadequacies from the current recruitment mechanism
According to the submission of the Ministry of Education and Training, teacher recruitment is currently subject to major adjustments of general regulations on civil servant recruitment, such as Decree No. 115/2020/ND-CP and Decree No. 85/2023/ND-CP. This approach reveals many limitations when applied to the field of education - a field with high specificity.
First, the current civil servant recruitment process does not pay due attention to pedagogical practice. Meanwhile, this is a core skill that directly reflects the professional capacity of teachers, from the ability to impart knowledge, organize classes to handle arising pedagogical situations.
Second, the decentralization of recruitment authority is still inadequate. In many localities, the Ministry of Home Affairs presides over the recruitment of teachers, causing the Education sector to fall into a passive position, making it difficult to proactively regulate the structure of teachers according to subjects and grades. The consequence is the situation of localized surplus and shortage of teachers, lasting for many years but not being completely resolved.
Third, the current recruitment mechanism is not flexible enough to attract talents, experts, and artisans to participate in teaching. At the same time, the requirement for standard qualifications is too high for some specialized subjects such as Fine Arts, Music, and ethnic minority languages, which is causing great difficulties for recruitment sources, especially in remote and isolated areas, and areas with difficult socio-economic conditions.
Pedagogy practice is the "center" of the recruitment round
To overcome the above inadequacies, the draft Decree specifically sets out Chapter III (from Article 18 to Article 25) detailing teacher recruitment. An important highlight is the determination that pedagogical practice is the mandatory and most important content in Round 2 of the exam or teacher recruitment consideration (Article 22).
According to Clause 2, Article 22, the form of assessment is designed flexibly, which may include: Direct teaching, interviews, pedagogical situation handling or writing exams. This approach allows the recruiting agency to comprehensively assess the actual professional capacity of the candidate, instead of just relying on profiles, degrees or theoretical exams.
In addition, the draft promotes decentralization of recruitment authority to educational institutions and specialized education management agencies (Article 18, Article 21). This helps the Education sector be more proactive in determining needs and selecting teachers suitable for job positions, subject characteristics and actual conditions of each locality.
Flexible qualification standards, expanding opportunities for disadvantaged areas
Another noteworthy new point is the establishment of a special recruitment mechanism for standard qualifications for teachers teaching special subjects and ethnic minority languages, as stipulated in Article 37 (Chapter VI). This regulation aims to remove "bottleneck" in recruitment sources, especially in difficult areas, where it is very difficult to find teachers who fully meet the common standards as at present.
In addition, the draft also supplements priority subjects in recruitment, such as people with meritorious services to the revolution, people in the armed forces and people with high professional skills (Article 19). This is considered an opening step to attract quality human resources, diversify the teaching staff, especially in vocational education and highly practical subjects.
According to the assessment of the Ministry of Education and Training, the new regulations will contribute to thoroughly overcoming the situation of "administrativeization" of teacher recruitment. Taking pedagogical practice as the focus helps to select the right people with the ability to convey, handle situations and immediately meet job requirements, limiting the situation of having to re-train after recruitment.
At the same time, flexible mechanisms on standard qualifications and talent attraction policies are expected to solve the problem of teacher shortages in remote and isolated areas, thereby contributing to ensuring fairness in access to quality education between regions.
The draft Decree is currently in the process of appraisal. When promulgated, it will be an important legal basis, directly impacting the rights, career opportunities and roadmap to enter the industry of teachers in the coming time.
