Unanimous on the subject and level of allowance payment

Recently, the Department of Teachers and Educational Managers (Ministry of Education and Training) held a conference to consult on preferential allowances for civil servants in public educational institutions and working conditions for general education and pre-university teachers.

According to this unit's report, currently, the implementation of preferential allowances for teachers is not yet consistent among localities due to overlaps in documents regulating zoning to determine beneficiaries and payment levels; due to mergers and adjustments of administrative unit types leading to untimely adjustments to payment levels; due to regulations in documents not being really strict leading to different ways of determining beneficiaries...

In addition, school staff only receive basic salary based on coefficient, not receiving allowances and benefits like teachers, so their material life is still difficult. This leads to the situation that many positions cannot be filled, many staff members resign to change careers...

The Department of Teachers proposed to develop a decree regulating preferential allowances for civil servants in public educational institutions to replace the current regulations. In particular, some subjects are proposed to have their vocational preferential allowances adjusted to better suit the complexity of their work; the division of administrative units is adjusted to be consistent with current legal regulations; clearer regulations on subjects who are and are not entitled to preferential allowances...

Will specify more clearly the working regime of teachers

At the conference, the Ministry of Education and Training also organized a consultation on the draft Circular regulating the working regime of general education and university preparatory teachers. The draft has a number of new regulations and adjustments compared to current circulars.

For example, teachers' working time is calculated according to the school year, converted into teaching periods in a school year or average teaching periods in a week to allow schools to be flexible in assigning and arranging teachers to implement the 2018 General Education Program and to facilitate the calculation of overtime pay.

In case a teacher must be assigned to teach more than the average teaching hours per week (including converted teaching hours for concurrent tasks), the number of teaching hours must not exceed 25% of the average teaching hours per week to ensure the teacher's work efficiency and ensure the regulations on overtime in the Labor Code.

The unified regulation on the number of actual teaching weeks for teaching educational content in the general education program is 35 weeks to ensure compliance with the regulations in the 2018 General Education Program and the guidance of the Ministry of Education and Training on the school year time frame.

The draft is also expected to stipulate that each teacher cannot hold more than two concurrent positions (including concurrent professional work; concurrent positions in the Party, mass organizations and other organizations; concurrently holding other job positions). According to the Ministry of Education and Training, this is to ensure that teachers focus on teaching and educational tasks.

Additional cases that do not have to make up and are counted as teaching the full number of assigned periods include cases where teachers are absent for medical examination and treatment; the draft also plans to increase the number of reduced periods for homeroom teachers at the primary level to 4 periods/week as at the secondary and high school levels; additional regulations for cases where teachers teach in multiple schools...

The Ministry of Education and Training believes that if the draft circular is issued, it will overcome difficulties and obstacles in implementing regulations on working regimes for general education teachers in the past, creating favorable conditions for educational institutions in assigning, arranging and using teachers.