LookAtVietnam – While the Government stipulates that local education department only have three deputy directors at maximum, many departments still have more than three.

While the Government clearly stipulates that local education and training department only have three deputy directors at maximum, many departments still have more than three.

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One and a half year ago, Le Van Dung took the office as Director of the Education and Training Department in Ninh Binh, a province in the north with the population of one million people and the number of students of 300,000, from nursery school children to vocational school students.

The thing that surprised Dung most was that Dung had. . . up to five deputy directors, while there must be only three.

The same situation is occurring in Vinh Phuc Province, where there are one director and five deputy directors of the education and training department. The director covers general works, while the five deputy directors take care of five important fields of education: preschool education, examination and education quality management, secondary education, continuation education and primary education.

Meanwhile, the department has many divisions and each of the divisions has one head and two deputy heads that cover the work in the field.

The Decree No 13 on the structure of the agencies belonging to provincial and cities’ people’s committees clearly stipulates that there must not be more than three deputy directors in local departments, while in Hanoi and HCM City, the maximum number of deputy directors of department is four.

It seems that local education and training department have ignored the legal documents. There are still more than three deputy directors in provinces’ and cities’ education and training departments, even though the education scale does not increase.

Vinh Phuc province has nearly 290,000 students, and the province has had five deputy directors of education and training since the beginning of 2010. Meanwhile, Ninh Binh province has had five deputy directors for the last 1.5 years.

Hanoi could be seen as an ‘exclusion’ because Hanoi has been expanded which means that the local education and training department has to take care for a very high number of students. As a result, Hanoi once had up to 10 deputy directors.

As for HCM City, the southern city with the population of seven million people, it is said on the website of the HCM City Education and Training Department that the apparatus of the department has one director of six deputy directors instead of four.

Different reasons have been cited to explain why there are so many deputy directors. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, Director of the Thua Thien-Hue city Education and Training Department, said that more officers means an eased burden.

Director of the Vinh Phuc Education and Training Department Le Thu said that it is not necessary to be too rigid in following regulations. He said that he will retire in October and a deputy director will also retire soon. Therefore, Vinh Phuc needs to have five deputy directors, so that the deputy directors can well prepare for the time when he is gone.

Bao Anh