3 YEARS WITHOUT RECRUITING AN ART TEACHER

Any subject can be lacking, and central or suburban schools can be unable to recruit teachers, according to those responsible for recruiting school staff.

According to statistics after the recruitment of teachers for the 2023-2024 school year, Mr. Phan Van Quang, Head of the Department of Education and Training of Tan Binh District (HCMC), informed that the district has a need to recruit 237 teachers, and up to now, 101 candidates have been recruited. Of which, the missing positions are Team leader, junior high school technology teacher and IT, art, and music teacher of both primary and secondary schools.

Similarly in District 6, Mr. Luu Hong Uyen, Head of the Department of Education and Training, informed that at each level of education, 3 subjects of fine arts, information technology, and music, each subject lacks 2-3 teachers.

At Le Van Tam Secondary School (Binh Thanh District), because there is only one art teacher, the school needs to recruit one more staff. However, up to this point, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, the school's principal, said that the school has not been able to recruit yet.

Nguyen Du Secondary School (District 1) has not been able to recruit art teachers for 3 years, while in the 2023-2024 school year, the school needs to recruit 2 more literature teachers.

Ms. Lam Hong Lam Thuy, Head of Primary Education Department of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, acknowledged the difficulty in implementing the 2018 General Education Program is the lack of teachers to teach English, IT, fine arts, and music.

SITUATIONAL SOLUTIONS

According to Mr. Luu Hong Uyen, schools will have solutions to deal with the situation depending on their actual conditions. Some schools, instead of arranging teachers to teach 19 periods, will negotiate to increase the number of sessions, increase the periods and pay extra, or they can find guest teachers. In addition, the Department of Education and Training encourages schools to support each other.

Regarding the plan to support and share teachers with each other, the Principal of Le Van Tam Secondary School commented that it is quite suitable. However, in the long term, school leaders have made proposals on income policies and regulations in the recruitment process.

For example, Ms. Nguyen Doan Trang, Principal of Nguyen Du Secondary School (District 1), said that one of the reasons for not being able to recruit teachers is the recruitment time. Some districts and counties conduct recruitment before the university issues graduation certificates, so candidates do not have time to prepare their documents. In addition, candidates can now apply for recruitment in all districts and counties, so they can be admitted to many localities at the same time, then choose a school and then decide. This leads to the situation where those who are admitted do not receive the position, causing other candidates to lose their opportunities.

PROPOSED POLICIES TO ATTRACT TEACHERS

To solve this situation, according to Mr. Nguyen Van Hieu, Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City, the Department of Organization and Personnel researched and advised the People's Committees of districts on the recruitment timeline.

In addition, there are opinions that the difficulty in recruiting teachers is due to low income, especially for teachers of specialized subjects such as information technology, fine arts, music, etc. Human resources in these subjects are not interested in the education sector, even though they have graduated from a pedagogical major, they still choose other environments because of suitable income. Mr. Nguyen Van Hieu said that the Department of Education and Training is in the process of building, consulting and perfecting to submit to the City People's Committee a policy to attract teachers.

Mr. Le Van Luc, Principal of Dang Tan Tai Secondary School (Thu Duc City), proposed that the government pay attention to salary policies and other incentives for education officials so that salaries and incomes meet the needs of life. For new teachers and contract teachers, there should be support policies to ensure that their income is not lower than the regional minimum wage. There should be reasonable incentive policies for security guards, librarians, equipment, accountants, clerks, etc. because the current income of these groups is still low.

Ms. Tran Thi Loi, Principal of Lam Van Ben Primary School (Nha Be District), proposed that all officials working in the education sector be entitled to seniority, including office workers.

Mr. Luong Van Minh, Principal of Can Thanh High School (Can Gio District), also proposed that in addition to management, administration, and teacher positions, accounting, clerical, medical, library, equipment, laboratory, and information technology are "hard structures" that schools must have. In addition, there should be a salary payment policy based on job position, so that the income between positions in schools does not differ too much...