LookAtVietnam – Low salaries are driving experienced teachers from public to private and international schools, while the enrolment at universities of pedagogy continues to fall.

An eighth-grade chemistry teacher shows her students an experiment at Nguyen Du Junior High School in HCM City.

Most of the teachers who quit were working at the primary and junior high school level.

Because of the increasing number of private and international schools, more teachers are being poached from public schools.

With such expansion in the private sector, the city now needs an additional 2,000 teachers in all grades, according to the education department.

Every year, about 1,000 students graduate from pedagogy universities, meeting only one-quarter of the current demand.

Nguyen Bac Dung, headmaster of Tran Dai Nghia High School, a highly selective public school, said 10 excellent teachers had recently resigned and moved to other schools.

Dung said 90 per cent of the teachers who receive advanced degrees will leave the school, and that few graduates were applying to the HCM City University of Pedagogy.

Nang Khieu High School, a public school that once was free to students, paid half of the tuition for six teachers to study at master’s level programmes in Viet Nam. Tuition was also partly paid for one teacher to work on a Ph.D programme overseas.

Vo Thi Bach Mai, principal of Nang Khieu High School, said one-third of her staff are permanent employees and the others are guest teachers from HCM City’s University of Science and Humanities and HCM City’s University of Natural Sciences.

Mai said salaries for the teachers were quite low, with the average being VND32,000 (US$1.90) for each 45-minute teaching session.

The 10-year-old high school, which once exempted tuition fees, began charging students a VND45,000 monthly fee this year, Mai said.

Very few students at more selective high schools, such as Trung Vuong, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Le Quy Don and Hung Vuong schools, are applying for admission to the teacher training university.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News