Only 50 percent of the demand met

The public servant recruitment results for the school year 2021-2022 have just been announced by the People's Committee of District 1, and all three levels of education, including preschool, primary, and junior high school, have a success rate of less than 40 percent. Specifically, the preschool can only recruit 18 teachers out of 53 candidates (33.9 percent); the primary school has 30 successful candidates out of 94 (31.9 percent); the junior high school recruits 18 teachers out of 51 candidates (35.2 percent). As for staff positions, the target is 82, but only 35 candidates have been accepted, so the rate is less than 43 percent. The deputy principal of a junior high school in District 1 said that the shortage of teachers had occurred continuously in the past few years. "Every year, we have to rearrange class units and contract with more visiting teachers to meet the teaching needs of the unit," he said.

Previously, at the end of March, the People's Committee of District 7 recognized the recruitment results of officials in the education and training sector for the 2021-2022 school year. Accordingly, there were 65 successful candidates, including 36 primary school teachers, 21 junior high school teachers, and eight continuing education teachers.

Thus, compared to 143 recruitment targets at all educational levels, the number of successful candidates is less than 50 percent. Of which, the primary school level accounts for the highest rate, with 46.7 percent of successful candidates. Similarly, District 12 needed to recruit 240 new teachers and 24 staff at all levels for the 2021-2022 school year. However, the announced recruitment results show that there were only 140 successful candidates. Of which, the preschool level lacks 24 teachers, and the primary and junior high school levels lack 40 teachers each.

At present, the Department of Education and Training in District 4 is accepting applications for the recruitment of public servants in 2022. By the afternoon of April 27, there were no applications for the preschool level, only eight for the primary level out of 50 targets, and 11 applications for the junior high school level out of more than 20 recruitment targets. The deadline to receive applications lasts until mid-May-2022, but, according to an officer in charge of data entry, it is unlikely that a sudden surge in the number of applications will happen. Some positions are forecasted not to have enough candidates.

Loosening teacher recruitment requirements

The teacher shortage is a problem that has lasted for many years at schools in HCMC. From the 2017-2018 school year, HCMC removed the requirement that applicants must have a permanent residence in HCMC. Although regulations are loosened, some subjects, such as Foreign Language, Informatics, Music, and Fine Arts, still lack candidates.

Candidates participating in the teacher recruitment for the 2020-2021 school year at Tran Dai Nghia High School. (Photo: SGGP)

To solve this difficulty, the People's Committee of HCMC has recently proposed the Ministry of Education and Training allow candidates with a bachelor's degree in a major related to Informatics, Music, Fine Arts, and Foreign Language 2 (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and French) without a certificate of professional training in pedagogy and having not participated in teaching at any general educational institution, to participate in teaching as contract and visiting teachers at educational institutions. These candidates commit to supplementing their pedagogical training certificates within 12 months from the time they start teaching. This is considered one of the solutions to increase the source of teachers and temporarily solve the problem of teacher shortage.

As for pedagogical universities, Dr. Bui Tran Quynh Ngoc, Vice-Rector of HCMC Pedagogical University, said that the school would promote training following the orders of localities with priority majors, such as preschool and primary pedagogy, and some majors meet the requirements of the 2018 General Education Program, such as Informatics, History - Geography, Natural Science, Technology, Citizenship Education, Fine Arts, and Music.

However, according to education experts, training at pedagogical schools is only a necessary condition. In the long run, to stabilize the source of teachers, it is necessary to have regulations on regimes and policies to retain good teachers, especially in specific subjects, to avoid brain drain into non-public services and systems. According to Assoc. Prof.-Dr. Pham Hoang Quan, Rector of Saigon University, in the context of a shortage of Fine Arts and Music teachers, localities can try the solution of recruiting inter-school teachers (a teacher who teaches a subject in many schools) to temporarily meet the needs of teaching special subjects in schools.