VietNamNet Bridge – Viet Nam is currently facing a surplus in teachers for secondary and elementary schools, the Ministry of Education and Training has said.

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With nearly 90 schools and institutions offering education and training courses nationwide, approximately 35,000 teachers have had to take jobs other than teaching, according to the Ministry.

The surplus in teachers has led to an increasing number of unemployed graduates specialising in education and training in recent years and a cut in human resources in schools. Recently, a school in Ky Anh District of central Ha Tinh Province has ended a working contract with 214 teachers; 84 kindergarten teachers in Soc Son District of Ha Noi City were also made redundant and 29 secondary teachers in Ba Thuoc District of central Thanh Hoa Province had to switch to teach in kindergarten schools.

Ministry of Education and Training has released a decree to order education and training schools to stop recruiting students for open courses in education and training in late December.

It also targets to have the number of students studying education and training drop by 10 per cent in 2016.

More graduates specialising in education and training would be unemployed if schools do not improve the quality of training courses, given that there were up to a hundred schools and institutions offering education and training courses nationwide, said Deputy Head of Viet Nam College Association, Tran Xuan Nhi.

In reality, there was still a shortage of high-quality teachers as colleges now paid little attention on improving the quality of training courses, said Head of Ha Noi Education Association, Nguyen Tung Lam.

Based on the actual demand, it seemed that there was not that many teachers in surplus, said former Head of National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Education, Youths and Children, Nguyen Minh Thuyet. While the Ministry of Education and Training stipulates that there should be about 35 to 40 students per class, the real number in Ha Noi and HCM City is from 50 to 60 students.

If there are sufficient facilities and budget to apply the model of 20 to 25 students per class as the international practice, there would be a lack of teachers in big cities, according to Thuyet.

In addition, while there are thousands of teachers in surplus every year, there is also a lack of experienced teachers working in schools in remote areas.

Schools needed to pay more attention to improving teachers' quality and might need to provide additional training to those that were not qualified enough, said Lam.

In addition, to avoid the excess of teachers, schools should identify the total number of additional teachers needed, which can be calculated based on the current number of teachers and total number of babies born every year and then identify the number of student enrollments, said Thuyet.

VNS