VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) plans to transfer 40,000 redundant teachers from general schools to preschools, which need 30,000 more teachers. 

However, MOET has been warned that big problems would arise once school teachers are asked to undertake jobs not in their majors.

Nguyen Thi Van, who was a math teacher at Bao Thanh Secondary School in Nghe An province, and 75 teachers, will have to become preschool teachers.

Though Van can expect a higher salary when working as a preschool teacher, she doesn’t really like the move, because she lacks the skills to teach at preschools.

“We have knowledge, but we lack pedagogical skills,” she said. “Besides, preschool teachers need to have an aptitude for working with children, or the job will be torturous for them."

In Thanh Hoa province, more than 100 secondary school teachers in Thach Thanh district have been transferred to primary and nursery schools. Of these, 40 have been asked to be in charge of cooking rice and washing dishes. 

MOET’s Minister Phung Xuan Nha, at a conference on January 7, admitted that requirements for preschool teachers are different from general school teachers and that quality could be an issue.

Nha believes that the low quality of preschool teachers is one of the reasons behind child abuse that local newspapers have repeatedly mentioned in recent months.

To settle the problems, MOET has assigned pedagogical schools to build a curriculum to retrain redundant general school teachers and bring them to preschools. 

The curricula will be designed in a way which allows teachers to study from a distance or study online so as to ease the load on pedagogical schools. 

Nguyen Van Minh, rector of the Hanoi Education University, which is designing the curriculum, said the curriculum would comprise 51 credits to be fulfilled within three semesters.

Stressing that preschool teachers have to have specific virtues, Pham Hong Quang, rector of the Thai Nguyen University of Education, said it was necessary to control the quality of input learners so as to ensure the quality of preschool teachers.

“The major task of preschool teachers is teaching and bringing up children. People should not become a preschool teacher if they cannot dance, sing and communicate with children with reasonable language skills and emotion,” he said.

Meanwhile, educators still have doubts about the number of 70,000 redundant school teachers, saying that it could be inaccurate.

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