Legal gap
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has just 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 first legalization of separate regulations on transfer, transfer and inter-school and inter-level teaching for teachers, and at the same time studying and supplementing the mobile allowance regime to remove obstacles that have existed for many years.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, currently the use and arrangement of teachers is mainly implemented according to the Law on Public Employees and regulations on secondment of public employees in Decree No. 115/2020/ND-CP (amended and supplemented in Decree No. 85/2023/ND-CP). Meanwhile, the Law on Education and specialized laws do not have separate regulations on transfer, transfer or teaching inter-schools and inter-levels for teachers.
This legal gap makes the management and regulation of the teaching staff in many localities difficult, especially in the context of localized teacher surplus and shortage between localities, grades and subjects.
Many inadequacies directly affect teachers' rights
Also according to the Ministry of Education and Training, reality shows that due to the lack of flexible regulatory mechanisms, teacher management is still fragmented between the Education sector and local management agencies (Ministry of Home Affairs, People's Committee). The consequence is that the transfer of teachers from surplus places to lacking places is not timely, affecting the quality of teaching.
In addition, the current deferral regime has a maximum term of 3 years, which is not suitable for cases where long-term teacher use is needed or regular coordination between school sites, especially in remote and isolated areas.
The rights of teachers when being transferred and transferred are not fully guaranteed. Currently, there are no clear regulations on preserving seniority allowances and preferential allowances when teachers are transferred to management agencies or change their working positions between grades. This makes many teachers worried and uneasy when receiving new tasks.
In addition, many localities have implemented inter-school teaching to overcome the shortage of teachers, but there is no specific legal framework on norms, mobile allowances as well as travel support funds, leading to inconsistent ways of doing things and creating disadvantages for teachers.
Legalizing the transfer, relocation and inter-school teaching
To overcome the above-mentioned inadequacies, the draft Decree has allocated Chapter IV (from Article 28 to Article 30) to specifically regulate the transfer, transfer and inter-school and inter-level teaching for teachers.
Accordingly, Articles 28 and 29 clearly stipulate the authority to transfer and relocate, in the direction of promoting decentralization, clarifying the role of the Director of the Department of Education and Training in coordinating inter-communal and inter-provincial teachers, ensuring the effective use of assigned staff.
Article 28 stipulates the mechanism for preserving regimes and policies for teachers when implementing transfer and relocation, contributing to ensuring rights and creating a sense of peace of mind in work.
Accepting the opinions of localities and ministries, the Ministry of Education and Training said that the draft is studying to supplement the mobile allowance regime, and at the same time convert travel time into working norms to support teachers who have to regularly travel between school sites.
If approved, this regulation is expected to reduce disadvantages for teachers, create a unified legal basis for organizing inter-school teaching, thereby contributing to fundamentally solving the current problem of teacher shortage - surplus.
