Ms. Nguyen Minh Phuong is a good teacher for many years, with 18 years of experience. Before the Lunar New Year 2025, Ms. Phuong was invited twice to teach life skills at a center near her home.

The first time she refused, the second time she said she would think about it. However, in the past few days, Ms. Phuong has intended to contact the center again to accept the collaboration.

"I also tried to find some life skills certification courses to prepare for my new job. Since searching online, my personal page has been flooded with spam messages advertising the courses," Ms. Phuong shared.

On forums for teachers, advertisements for life skills certification services and business registration consulting services are constantly being pushed into the comment section. Ms. Phuong said that these are two directions for primary school teachers in rural areas after Circular 29.

"In Hanoi, there are many tutoring centers, extra-curricular centers, and private schools for teachers to choose from. As for rural teachers, if they want to earn extra income using their own expertise, the only way is to register a business or teach life skills at the elementary level," Ms. Phuong explained.

Mr. Nguyen Trung Kien, a math teacher at a private school in Hanoi, is considering quitting his job to open a "legitimate" tutoring center.

"Public and private teachers are all controlled by the regulation of not giving paid extra lessons to regular students. If you still teach at school, this is extremely difficult to avoid. To keep my honor, I think quitting is the best way.

Moreover, if I can open a center with proper documents, I can also support my colleagues, so that they can make a living from their profession and not waste their intelligence," Mr. Kien expressed.

According to lawyer Hoang Van Liem, L&P International Law Office, Circular 29 stipulates that organizations and individuals providing private tutoring must register their business. However, teachers who are civil servants are not allowed to establish and manage businesses according to the provisions of the Enterprise Law. They can only register as individual businesses.

"The procedure for registering a sole proprietorship business is quite simple. Teachers can learn about the procedure through the national public service portal, then submit their application directly or online to the district-level business registration agency," said lawyer Liem.

However, Mr. Liem said that Circular 29 is unclear about whether public school teachers are allowed to register for business or not.

"Article 4 of Circular 29 stipulates cases where extra teaching and extra teaching are not allowed, clearly stating in point 3: "Teachers at public schools are not allowed to participate in the management and operation of extra teaching outside of school but can participate in extra teaching outside of school".

According to this regulation, public teachers are not allowed to register as individual businesses to teach extra classes but can only teach extra classes by working for centers.

I think there needs to be more detailed and specific instructions to clarify what teachers can and cannot do in extra teaching and learning," said lawyer Liem.

(*) Teacher's name has been changed.