On June 7, the Department of Education and Training of Nghe An province said that despite many efforts to invest in education, the whole province still lacks over 4,000 teachers and has up to 882 satellite schools, making it difficult to invest in infrastructure and organize teaching effectively.
Currently, the whole province has 1,507 schools at all levels with almost every commune, ward and town having public kindergartens and primary schools. In the period of 2021 - 2025, the province has merged 31 schools, reduced 200 branch schools and spent nearly 60,000 billion VND - accounting for 37% of the total local budget - on education and training.
However, the arrangement of the school network revealed many shortcomings, especially the situation of overloaded main schools due to the lack of timely investment in facilities after the merger.
In addition, more than 4,000 teacher positions are still missing, focusing on IT, Foreign Language, Music, Fine Arts and new subjects in the 2018 general education program. Teacher recruitment has not kept up with the assigned staffing targets, causing a shortage of teachers in many localities.
In the field of vocational education, although the basic staff has been standardized, the province still lacks high-quality teachers for key ASEAN-level professions, especially in schools in ethnic minority areas. Policies to attract highly skilled teachers are still lacking, while the scale and quality of human resources have not met development requirements.
From the above reality, Nghe An education sector proposed to adjust the outdated mechanism, issue policies to attract teachers to teach IT, English, vocational education in remote areas; recruit enough teachers according to targets and increase training and fostering existing teams.
In addition, the provincial education sector also proposed to promote the merger of small schools and combined classes on the basis of ensuring travel conditions, teaching quality and collecting public opinions. Along with that, it is necessary to prioritize investment in the system of ethnic boarding and semi-boarding schools and improve facilities in schools that are still in disrepair.
As Lao Dong has reported, the shortage of teachers has occurred for many years in Nghe An. Before the 2023 - 2024 school year, the whole province still lacks more than 7,000 teachers. The above situation has improved, but up to now, the whole province still lacks more than 4,000 teachers.
