The whole country still lacks more than 113,000 teachers.

The 2024-2025 school year is less than a month away. However, teacher shortages are still occurring in many localities. 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, primary schools will still lack 6,621 IT teachers and 5,780 foreign language teachers. At the secondary school level, Technology will lack 11,598 teachers, Natural Science will lack 2,366 teachers, and Art will lack 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 of Education and Training such as Dak Lak and Hau Giang also shared concerns about the shortage of teachers and difficulty in recruiting teachers locally.

In Ho Chi Minh City, to prepare for the new school year, the city is urgently recruiting teachers, with more than 4,000 positions for all levels from preschool to high school.

In Dak Nong province, before the new school year, the provincial People's Committee has just sent a document to the Central Organizing Committee, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Training to consider and supplement more than 2,700 positions receiving salaries from the State budget, including more than 2,100 teacher positions.

In the 2024-2025 school year, Dak Nong province will have 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 classrooms. To meet the teaching and learning needs, Dak Nong province has requested relevant agencies to promptly consider and assign more than 2,100 additional teacher positions and more than 600 school staff positions.

Concerned about teaching quality

According to the roadmap, the 2018 General Education Program will begin implementation from the 2020-2021 school year for grade 1.

Thus, with this roadmap, from the 2024-2025 school year, the 2018 General Education Program will officially be applied to all grades.

Lack of teacher resources is one of the current difficulties of general 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 the quality of education as set out in the 2018 General Education Program.

In fact, the current shortage of teachers is concentrated in integrated subjects, IT, English...

To solve the problem of the shortage of teachers for integrated subjects, it has been recorded at a number of pedagogical institutions across the country that schools have proactively opened training courses for teachers of integrated subjects to ensure the number of teachers for these subjects in the coming time.

Since 2023, Hanoi National University of Education 2 has enrolled and trained History - Geography Pedagogy. Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Thu - Head of the school's Training Department said that in 2024, the school will continue to enroll students in this major and start enrolling students for Natural Science Pedagogy. This major was opened to meet the social needs of teachers who can teach integrated learning; the program is regularly updated to ensure it is suitable for reality.

Also in this year's enrollment season, Hanoi National University of Education began enrolling and training History - Geography and Natural Sciences at the university level according to the decision just signed by the Ministry of Education and Training. This is the first time the school has opened a training program for integrated subject teachers after 5 years of the education sector announcing the new general education program with the introduction of integrated subjects.

The story of teacher shortage is a recurring concern of educational institutions every time a new school year begins. This situation makes localities struggle in organizing teaching and learning. This is also a problem for the education sector to ensure the quality of implementing the new program at all levels.