Despite a lot of efforts in improving the quantity and quality of teachers, Vietnam is still lacking teachers some places, though there are great numbers elsewhere.

Every year, Vietnam has 76 percent of students finish secondary school and successfully enroll in high school.

A report reviewing the three years of implementing the plan on building up the force of teachers and education management staff said that in the 2007-2008 school year, Vietnam had 1,055,078 teachers, an increase of 79,800 teachers (7.56 percent) over the 2004-2005 school year.

The report revealed that in 2005-2006, Vietnam had nearly 107,000 high school teachers throughout the country.

Despite the higher number of teachers, Vietnam still lacks teachers in some areas, especially teachers in informatics, music, art and technology at the general education level.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Vinh Hien has also admitted that a lack of teachers in some localities and fields and abundance of teachers in other localities and fields is a problem that has existed for many years.

He also said that due to the lack of a strategic plan on training teachers, a lot of teachers and management staffs should not be in the positions they are in.

As for primary education, teachers now only can meet 86% of the demand for teaching in both the morning and afternoon, while Vietnam is still seriously lacking teachers in music, art, informatics, physical exercise and foreign languages.

Moreover, Vietnam is lacking teachers in informatics, chemistry, biology, music, arts and technology for secondary schools, and lacking teachers in national defence, technology and informatics for high schools.

Every year, Vietnam has 76 percent of students finish secondary school and successfully enroll in high school. The number of students increased from 554,000 in 1991-1992 school year to 2,802,000 in 2005-2006.

The sharp increase in the number of students, according to Nguyen Huu Chau, head of the Institute for Education Strategies and Curriculums under the Ministry of Education and Training, has led to a shortage of teachers for high schools, especially in remote areas.

Most continuing education centres do not have enough teachers to teach seven compulsory subjects as required, while they have to hire teachers from other high schools. The number of teachers at these centres tends has been decreasing, by 1,800 teachers in comparison with 2004-2005.

Some localities have reported an abundance of teachers for primary schools, and a lack of teachers for pre-schools and high schools.

According to the Ca Mau Education and Training Department, the province had 942 teachers for pre-school education last school year (1.0 teacher for every class), lacking 250 teachers. High schools in the province lacked 300 teachers, while primary schools had 8,250 teachers, 200 teachers too many.

Still lacking compared to real demand

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, in the 2007-2008 school year, Vietnam had 1,055,078 teachers, which meant that 40,000 teachers were lacking, including 20,000 for higher education, 10,000 for vocational schools, and 8,000 for high schools.

Currently, Vietnam has 134,246 high school teachers, and the ratio of teachers per class is 1.98, lower than the required ratio of 2.25. The percentage of standard teachers is 98 percent, of which 3.8 percent have MA degrees at least. Vietnam is striving to have 10 percent of teachers at high schools have MA degrees by 2010.

University education now lacks some 20,000 teachers, while vocational schools will lack 10,000 teachers by 2015.

VietNamNet/VnMedia