The Institute for Policy Development under the HCM City National University has published a study on the lives of teachers in Binh Thuan, Tay Ninh and Hau Giang provinces. To conduct this study, the Institute interviewed nearly 13,000 teachers and education managers in September and October.

Teachers’ pay just satisfies half of needs 

The study found that since the basic wage was raised from VND1.8 million to VND2.34 million, applied since July 1, 2024, teachers’ incomes have significantly improved.

However, the incomes of teachers just satisfy 51.87 percent of the monthly needs of the families which have extra incomes from subordinate jobs. As for the group of teachers without any additional jobs, the figure is 62.55 percent.

Meanwhile, the teachers with less than 10 years of service length said their incomes are just high enough to satisfy 45.7 percent of their basic monthly needs.

Assessing the level of financial pressure (teachers’ incomes are not high enough to cover basic needs), the average score is relatively high – 3.61/5 (5 score means very hard pressure). 

Forty-four percent of teachers said they were bearing hard to very hard pressure. Only 19 percent of teachers said they were in comfortable and very comfortable conditions, with no financial pressure.

Teachers also face pressure caused by professional activities, such as preparing lesson plans, attending meetings, administrative and social works; and pressure in implementing regulations on teachers’ standard behaviors towards students.

However, the hardest pressure comes from students’ parents. 70.21 percent of teachers said they were under this pressure, or under hard pressure. 40.63 percent of teachers said they once thought of giving up the job because of mental abuse from parents.

The survey has also found that 71.83 percent of teachers are overloaded. The ratio is higher for preschool teachers – 87.65 percent. Nearly 70 percent of preschool teachers don’t have free time for sports and entertainment activities. 46 percent of teachers at other different education levels spent less than 10 percent of daily time on activities. Teachers only have 15.81 percent of time to take care of families.

3 of teachers have extra classes

In the interview, 25.4 percent of teachers said they run extra classes in their schools, and 9.2 percent outside their schools. The teaching subjects include Maths, Literature, English, Physics and Chemistry. 

Primary school teachers have 8.6 extra teaching hours a week, while secondary school teachers 13.75 hours and high school 14.91 hours.

There are different private tutoring models. Some teachers give private tutoring lessons to their students at the same schools. Others provide extra lessons at their homes, at lesson reviewing centers, online, and with open courseware. The teachers running extra classes at centers are mostly teachers of English.

Though giving extra teaching hours is prohibited, teachers still do this under different forms, from in-person to online classes. The survey found that 63.57 percent of teachers expressed their willingness to legalize extra teaching, including extra teaching at home and online, so they can improve their incomes with their professional skills.

While affirming that teachers’ incomes are too modest for a normal life, and that they bear hard pressure from their career, 94.23 percent of teachers said they still keep teaching because of the love for people and students. Nearly 50 percent of polled teachers said they stick to the job because of reasonable incomes and good pay/allowances.

The policy expected by most teachers (89.18 percent) is financial preferences. In addition, they want to lower the retirement age (83.91 percent), increase income (83.57 percent) and remove barriers to rank upgrading (82.96 percent).

The researcher – HCM City National University – hopes that agencies compiling the Law on Teachers to pay more attention to wage/allowance regime; create a firm legal framework to protect teachers from pressure; lower the retirement age for preschool teachers and prolong the service length for teachers with a doctorate and titles of Associate Professor and Professor.

Running extra classes remains a contradictory issue. Some parents said their children are forced to attend extra classes run by their teachers, and if not they will be bullied in curricular lessons. However, teachers say that they give private tutoring classes because of demand from parents and children in reality.

Le Huyen