The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) reports that the country lacks 118,253 teachers. The figure was 11,308 in the 2021-2022 academic year.

It is estimated that by the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, Vietnam had 1,234,124 preschool and general school teachers. Of these, teachers at public schools accounted for 88.57 percent, while non-public schools had 11.43 percent.

The educational sector is understaffed with the workforce unable to satisfy teaching demand at education establishments. 

Meanwhile, the government program on streamlining the apparatus by 10 percent has made it more difficult to settle the teacher shortage.

MOET admitted that the rearrangement of non-business public units and apparatus streamlining in association with quality improvement has posed a great challenge to the educational sector. 

The number of teachers for classes at public preschools and general schools in the country (teachers on the state’s payroll) is still lower than prescribed.

The localities with the lowest ratios include northern mountainous areas (there are 1.6 teachers for each preschool class); Red River Delta and the eastern part of the southern region (there are 1.29 teachers per class at primary school, and 1.69 at secondary school). In the Red River Delta, there are 1.92 teachers per class at high schools.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, 9,295 teachers quit their jobs.

Official statistics show that the country still lacks 118,253 teachers, up by 11,308 teachers compared with 2021-2022 (up 7,887 for preschool, 169 for primary education, 1,207 for secondary education and 2,045 for high education levels)

Experts have also found while some subjects have an abundant number of teachers, other subjects don’t have a sufficient number of teachers, and while many teachers are jobless in large cities, rural areas cannot employ teachers. It is very difficult to recruit teachers of English, Informatics, Music and Arts.

MOET believes the teacher shortage at preschools became more serious last year because the number of children going to preschool in 2022-2023 increased by 132,245 over the previous year, which means 5,500 more teachers were needed.

As for primary education, the proportion of students who have two learning shifts per day (morning and afternoon) in 2022-2023 increased by 4.6 percent (10,811 classes, 3,000 more teachers were needed).

Meanwhile, high schools had 669 more classes compared with the previous academic school, which meant 1,500 more teachers were needed.

In 2022-2023, 19,300 public school teachers retired or resigned from their posts (10,094 teachers retired and 9,295 teachers quit their jobs).

Thanh Hung