VietNamNet Bridge – Though Hanoi has been spending money and applying many measures to improve pre-school education, it is still facing a lot of problems.  The city is seriously lacking nursery school teachers.

Teachers seriously lacking

Hanoi is a big city, where the demand for going to nursery school is very high. However, with great efforts, the percentage of children who can go to school is still the highest in the country: 85 percent of children can go to kindergartens and 25 percent of children to nursery schools. In the 2010-2011 academic year, with 99.4 percent of children at the age to go to schools, Hanoi is one of the few localities which have nearly reached the target of universalizing education for 5-year-olds.

In order to obtain the figures, Hanoi has been spending a considerable portion of its budget on building schools and applying  measures to make nursery school teachers equal to teachers at grammar schools.

However, educators have pointed out that  there remains one big problem: Hanoi is seriously lacking nursery school teachers.

Dam Quoc Khanh, Deputy Chair of Hoang Mai District’s People’s Committee said that the Education and Training Department and the Department of Interior Affairs should find solutions to settle the problem that nursery school teachers now only want to work for private run schools instead of state-owned schools.

Cao Bich Lan, Deputy Chair of Hoan Kiem District, related that last year, she witnessed 10 teachers of the school leaving her school for private schools. “They have better salaries  in the other schools, and they can also receive social insurance. We have a good working environment, but if teachers do not keep their mind on their work, we will lose them,” Lan said.

In many districts, not only teachers, but management officers are also seriously lacking. La Thi Bich Nhung, Deputy Chair of Thanh Tri District’s People’s Committee said that there are only 62 teachers who are regular members of the personnel, which means they can get salaries from the state budget, including 53 management officers.

“Thanh Tri needs 16 management officers for nursery schools. There are nine regular members of the personnel, but they cannot be appointed to the posts of managers, because they are not qualified,” Nhung said.

“As we do not have enough regular staff members, we have to appoint teachers who are working under fixed term labor contracts into the posts of managers,” she added. According to Hanoi’s Department for Interior Affairs, there are 86 such cases in the city.

Hanoi does not want to recruit nursery school teachers?

Under the plan to improve pre-school education in Hanoi by 2015, about 500 semi-state owned nursery schools in the city will be shifted to operate under the model of state-owned schools with self-managed finances.

Under the current regulations, every such school will have six persons who can receive salaries from the state budget. As such, Hanoi needs to recruit 3000 teachers for the schools. However, for many reasons, until 2009, the city still “owed” 3000 teachers to the 500 schools.

The city’s authorities also decided that in 2011, nursery schools throughout the whole city will recruit 5000 teachers in order to popularize education for 5-year-old children. However, to date, districts still have not been allocated “quotas”.

Source: Tien phong