During the morning discussion session on November 9 on the draft Law on Teachers, General Secretary To Lam emphasized the position and strategic significance of education and training. In which, teacher training is the focus.

"How can children go to school without teachers?"

"To develop training and education, first of all we must have teachers and schools. With the general orientation of the Party, I think we must thoroughly understand the strategy and position of teachers," said the General Secretary.

But when talking about teachers, we must also talk about students. With this approach, the General Secretary believes that the draft law needs to clarify and resolve the relationship between teachers and students.

Emphasizing the important role of policy solutions, the General Secretary said that the orientation of universal education must "gradually progress", in the direction that children of school age must go to school. "If we progress further, the State must support, and eventually exempt tuition fees, and feed school-age children. Progress must be at that level," the General Secretary emphasized.

Reiterating the need to properly resolve the teacher-student relationship, the General Secretary raised the issue that in each ward, commune or district, how many school-age children are updated on the population data system each year. That means that if there are students, there must be proactive teachers, because "without teachers, how can children go to school?".

The General Secretary said that we must solve the problem of teacher shortage and also the lack of school planning.

The story of teacher shortage and lack of staff, according to the General Secretary, is a very current story and policies must cover this reality.

Another issue raised by General Secretary To Lam was the country's integration trend. "So how do teachers integrate? It's very difficult not to talk about that," the General Secretary stated.

He emphasized the policy of popularizing English in education and said that this must be shown more clearly because only when teachers have English can students popularize English.

"These need specific policies to implement the State's policies. If there are no English teachers, how can there be English students? Math and Literature teachers must also have English, not just foreign language teachers. We must approach and integrate to that extent," the General Secretary reiterated that to popularize and consider English as a second language, there must be specific policies and development requirements.

Regarding the lifelong learning policy, the General Secretary said that if it is stipulated that teachers who reach retirement age are no longer allowed to teach, it will be very difficult and will not be possible to mobilize resources. Because a professor in the education sector, although older, has more prestige and experience, so he needs to be encouraged to participate in education and teaching work.

In particular, for teachers in special environments such as prisons, remote areas, and particularly difficult areas, according to the General Secretary, there must be specific policies.

The General Secretary hopes that when the Law on Teachers is enacted, it will truly create favorable conditions for those working in education.

Let the education sector manage recruitment , avoid surplus and shortage

Also giving comments on the draft Law on Teachers, delegate Thai Van Thanh (Nghe An) was interested in giving the education sector the initiative in recruiting and using teachers.

According to him, this regulation will create favorable conditions for localities and educational institutions to proactively develop plans to develop teaching staff, from recruitment, evaluation, to human resource training.

The delegate said that when education management agencies are in charge of recruitment and staff management, they can also be proactive in mobilizing, rotating, and seconding human resources, limiting the situation of local teacher surplus or shortage in localities.

In fact, Mr. Thanh said that there is a situation where this district has a lot of surplus teachers but cannot transfer them to districts with shortages, because the industry is not assigned authority to manage the payroll.

"For a long time, we have been saying that the teaching staff is short about 120,000 people, of which 72,000 people have not been recruited. The reason for the slow recruitment is due to many layers, such as going through the internal affairs department, then back to the education department, then back to the internal affairs department, 3-4 rounds slowing down the recruitment, leading to the new school year starting but there are still no teachers," Mr. Thanh reflected on the inadequacy.