The number of pedagogical school students requested by localities in the last three years under government Decree 116 remains modest, while payments from some localities remain unpaid.

HCM City Vice Mayor Tran Thi Dieu Thuy, noting the serious shortage of teachers in the city, said that recruitment of teachers of Informatics, English, Fine Arts and Music has been difficult because of low salaries.

A recent workshop has brought to light a concerning trend in Vietnam's education system - the severe shortage of Music and Art teachers in high schools, despite ongoing efforts to enhance training programs.

Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said Vietnam is lacking 127,583 teachers and the figure has been increasing. As many as 17,278 teachers had resigned as of September 2023.

The teacher shortage crisis has occurred for many years, but no improvement has been made.

Some experts have suggested lowering the required qualifications on teachers, especially in mountainous and remote areas. But this would violate the Education law.

In late 2021, Vietnam changed to safe adaptation to Covid-19, and the educational sector had to adapt to new conditions. Despite huge difficulties in the time of the pandemic, Vietnam’s education still gained great achievements.

Nhat Tien, a teacher at a primary school for autistic children in HCM City’s District 3, has been thinking about quitting her job for many times.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training also show that in the first ten months of this year, about 16,000 teachers quit their jobs, most of which were preschool educators.

In the 2021-2022 academic year, 16,265 teachers resigned and switched to other jobs, including 10.407 public school teachers and 5,858 private school teachers, according to the Ministry of Education and Training’s report to the National Assembly.

The Ministry of Education and Training has just sent to National Assembly deputies a proposal to develop a Law on Teachers to beat the odds and keep teachers from leaving their profession.

Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son has asked provinces and cities to urgently recruit 27,850 teachers for preschools and general schools to solve the teacher shortage.

HCM City lacks 6,000 teachers for the new school year, the municipal Education and Training Department has said.

Most teachers who have resigned are mostly in large cities and localities with industrial zones such as HCM City, Hanoi, Da Nang and Binh Duong, and areas with difficult socio-economic conditions such as Son La and Gia Lai.

Local education departments are complaining about the lack of teachers for schools. However, there are no teachers to recruit at this moment.

A shortage of teachers in specialised subjects is causing concern for high schools that are preparing to implement a long-approved new curriculum for 10th-graders in the next academic year.

Due to the pandemic, teacher recruitment for the 2021-2022 school year in Thu Duc City and 21 districts of HCM City took place later than every year. At present, some localities have finished recruitment, but the shortage of teachers still recurs.

Just three weeks after restarting in-person classes, many schools in HCM City are facing a shortage as an increasing number of teachers get COVID-19 infections.

By the end of the 2019-2020 academic year, Vietnam had 364,776 nursery school teachers, an increase of 2, 604 teachers over the previous year, according to a report from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).