Paradoxically, there is a shortage of teachers and pedagogical students are still unemployed

Lack of teachers...

According to statistics, as of April 2024, the country still lacks more than 113,000 teachers at all levels. It is forecasted that by the 2024-2025 school year, the primary school level will lack 6,621 IT teachers and 5,780 Foreign Language teachers. At the secondary level, Technology lacks 11,598 teachers, Natural Sciences lacks 2,366 teachers, and Arts lacks 4,321 teachers.

At the 2024 Department of Education and Training Directors conference recently organized by the Ministry of Education and Training, representatives of many departments such as Dak Lak and Hau Giang shared their concerns about the shortage of teachers and difficulty recruiting teachers locally.

For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, at the end of the first recruitment period, Ho Chi Minh City recruited 294 teachers and staff out of a total of 337 actual recruitment needs. Of which, 254/263 teachers and 41/74 staff were recruited.

Similarly in Thanh Hoa province, Mr. Tran Van Thuc - Director of the Department of Education and Training of Thanh Hoa province - said that although the locality has been supplemented with more than 6,000 teachers, however, there is still a shortage of more than 3,000 teachers compared to the target. level prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Training.

In Dak Nong, in the 2024-2025 school year, the whole province has more than 200,000 students at all levels. Although the number of schools has not increased compared to the previous school year, it is expected to increase by more than 500 classes. To meet the needs of teaching and learning, Dak Nong province requested relevant agencies to soon consider and assign more than 2,100 additional teacher payrolls and more than 600 school staff payrolls.

... but pedagogical students are still unemployed

According to the educational innovation roadmap, from the 2024-2025 school year, the 2018 General Education Program will officially be applied to all grade levels. Lack of teacher resources is one of the current difficulties facing high schools when implementing integrated teaching according to the 2018 General Education Program. Not only is it difficult to ensure daily teaching, but the lack of teachers also does not ensure the goal of improving education quality as set out in the 2018 General Education Program.

According to many teachers, although the school they are teaching in lacks teachers, the locality is not assigned a recruitment target. This leads to the paradox of a serious shortage of teachers, but pedagogical students graduating are still unemployed.

The case of Mr. Nguyen Phu Lam (Khanh Hoa) is a typical example of this. In 2020, Mr. Lam graduated with honors in English Pedagogy from the University of Foreign Languages, Hue University and has the desire to return to the locality to work and live. However, until now, after nearly 5 years of waiting, Mr. Phu Lam is still unemployed. "I am currently teaching at home and waiting for teacher recruitment announcements in the province" - Mr. Phu Lam said sadly.

Ordering teacher training is not really effective

One of the practical solutions related to teacher training is the introduction of Decree No. 116/2020/ND-CP on policies to support tuition payments and living expenses for pedagogical students.

In particular, every year, the People's Committees of provinces and cities review, calculate and determine the recruitment and training needs of local teachers for each level, level, major, and subject for the enrollment year and send it to the Ministry of Education and Training. and publicized in the media.

Based on the announced targets of teacher training facilities and teacher training needs, localities can assign tasks, place orders or bid for teacher training. This is considered a decisive highlight in the policy mechanism to remove difficulties in teacher training associated with the practical needs of the job position.

However, according to the assessment of Associate Professor, Dr. Le Thanh Bac - Deputy Director of Danang University, the surplus and shortage of local teachers has occurred for many years and the implementation of Decree 116 currently has many problems. limit.

"For localities with good socio-economic conditions such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong... they often consider ordering because it takes at least 4 years to have the product. Meanwhile, many teachers After graduating from the Pedagogy major, the income was low, the recruitment quota was limited, so they couldn't get a job. And essentially, everyone wanted to go to an economically developed place to work. Previously, there was a teacher policy If you go to the mountains for 5 years, you will be able to return, but there are many people who have been together for decades and still cannot return. Therefore, this policy is considered to be inconsistent" - Mr. Bac said.

To solve the local teacher shortage, while pedagogical students are still unemployed, Associate Professor Dr. Le Thanh Bac said that it is necessary to do a good job of predicting human resource development on an overall national scale. Having a good training strategy will solve the problem.