Some schools in Lang Chanh district in Thanh Hoa province have suspended the teaching of some subjects since the beginning of the new 2024-2025 academic year because of a lack of teachers.

Nguyen Ngoc Son, head of the Lang Chanh district education sub-department, said the provincial authorities allowed schools to recruit teachers to solve the problem, while the district authorities announced a recruitment program in mass media. However, there have been very few candidates. The schools in the entire district still need 92 more teachers.

Other mountainous districts in Thanh Hoa such as Quan Son, Quan Hoa and Muong Lat are also facing the same problem.

Analysts said most localities lacking teachers are located in remote areas. Pedagogical school graduates are not willing to work in remote areas with difficult conditions. Teachers want to stay in large cities and work for large schools to get higher pay. 

A VietNamNet reader suggested that it would be better to apply the labor division scheme like the one applied in the army. This means that after graduating from pedagogical schools, bachelor's degree holders will be sent to localities with a teacher shortage for a certain period. If they refuse the duty, they won’t be recruited by any school.

“If a rotation policy in division of labor is applied, mountainous areas will no longer lack teachers,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, another reader suggested that there should be an independent agency to organize a competition to recruit teachers and send to localities which have demand.

The recruitment of public employees needs to be put under strict control like the one applied to high school finals. The method will find talented teachers.

“Currently, some localities are seriously lacking teachers, but candidates still have to follow a lot of complicated procedures to apply for the jobs,” he noted.

While many schools continue complaining about the lack of teachers, pedagogical school graduates told VIetNamNet that they don’t have information about the schools and their demand.

“I read newspapers and found that many localities need more teachers, but in fact, no information about recruitment is made public. When we contact the localities, we are informed that the localities have recruited teachers,” a third-year student at a pedagogical school in Hanoi said.

Therefore, she believes that it would be better if localities publicize exact figures about the number of teachers and the teaching subjects they need, so that the information can reach those who want a teaching position.

If so, the recruitment process will be made in a transparent way, and wrongdoings will not occur (many people have to pay for a seat as teachers at schools).

She doesn’t think that all pedagogical school graduates want to stay in large cities or refuse to return to their hometown. In fact, many graduates want to work near their homes and devote themselves to the fatherland. For many candidates, returning to hometowns is a better choice than staying in large cities, because everything in large cities is more expensive than the countryside.

Another reason that makes it difficult to recruit teachers for schools is the modest pay. Many teachers work for schools under labor contracts signed between just them and the schools. The workers are not listed on the state’s payroll. It is very difficult to become a civil servant or a public employee, especially amid the state’s apparatus streamlining efforts. 

While workers in other sectors have to experience probation for only 2-3 months to become a regular member of the personnel, teachers don’t know how long they need to wait to become a civil servant or public employee to receive salaries from the state.

Even if they can become a civil servant or public employee, the modest monthly pay will discourage them. 

“No one accepts to work as a teacher just because of his ‘passion’ for the teaching job,” Tran Nguyen, a VietNamNet reader, commented.

Since teachers in the lowlands don’t want to work in mountainous areas, the authorities of mountainous areas should make attractive offers to teachers to attract them to their localities. Another solution is funding study at pedagogical schools with a student commitment to return to the localities to work after graduation.

Thuy Nga