VietNamNet Bridge - Over 50 percent of primary school teachers of English, 63.29 percent of secondary school and 73.88 percent of high school teachers cannot meet standards as required by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).

 

Under the National Foreign Language Teaching Program by 2020, 100 percent of students will study English from the third grade. However, Vietnam is still seriously lacking teachers of English with only 32 percent of teachers meeting standards by July 2015.

According to the Lai Chau provincial education and training department, there were 68 teachers of English in the 2015-2016 academic year. Though the province began recruitment five years ago, 91 out of 147 primary schools there still don’t have teachers of English.

In Ha Giang province, only 109 out of 227 primary schools can organize lessons of English because of the lack of teachers. Other provinces reported they lack 50 percent of teachers of English.

Over 50 percent of primary school teachers of English, 63.29 percent of secondary school and 73.88 percent of high school teachers cannot meet standards as required by MOET.

Nguyen Thi Thuy, headmaster of Yen My Primary School in Yen My district of Hung Yen province, said the enrolment quota had run out. A lot of teachers who had been working for more than 10 years under labor contracts signed with the school have decided to leave because they cannot get salaries from the state budget.

Phung Thi Hoang Yen from the Phu Tho Education and Training Department, said 100 percent of teachers were found not meeting the standards after the test in 2011. The figure shocked to the schools and teachers.

In Ben Tre province, a test in the 2011-2012 academic year found that only 2.4 percent of 212 teachers were recognized as meeting the 4th-grade standard (equivalent to B2 in the European framework), 39.2 percent meeting 3rd-grade and 58.4 meeting first and second grades.

The proportion of standard teachers increased significantly after they were sent to training courses. However, 11.6 percent of teachers still cannot meet the third grade standard.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong from MOET said she fears the national foreign language teaching program would fail because of the lack of teachers. 

Over 50 percent of primary school teachers of English, 63.29 percent  of secondary school and 73.88 percent of high school teachers cannot meet the standards. 

Meanwhile, a report of the MOET’s Primary Education Department showed that in some locality, only 5.7 percent of teachers meet standards.

MOET’s Deputy Minister Nguyen Vinh Hien admitted that lack of teachers is the biggest obstacle for the implementation of the plan on teaching English to primary school students.

He said the working teachers must improve through retraining, while schools only can recruit new teachers if the teachers can meet international standards.

Meanwhile, a teacher of English said short-term training courses will help bring more standard teachers to schools.


NLD