LookAtVietnam – Vocational schools in Mekong Delta are seriously lacking lecturers. Meanwhile, existing lecturers have been overloaded with extra teaching hours.

Vocational schools in Mekong Delta are seriously lacking lecturers. Meanwhile, existing lecturers have been overloaded with extra teaching hours.

Go to vocational schools first, then to universities?

Vocational schools meet national standards

Students complain about quality of vocational education

Can Tho has 644 vocational school teachers, including 50 with postgraduate degrees, 332 university graduates, 86 teachers with junior college degree and 176 teachers who finish two year training schools.

According to the Can Tho Department for Home Affairs, the teachers at vocational schools are weak in qualifications and short in number. Because most of vocational schools are lacking qualified lecturers, the training quality is low.

The Can Tho Vocational Junior College (junior college means three year training school), a key school in Mekong Delta, only has 70 teachers who have to work with 1945 students of regular training. The college still has hundreds other students who are trained in other ways.

Among state owned schools, the Can Tho Software Technology School has the lowest number of staff with just 11 teachers. The shortage of teachers proves to be more serious in non-state schools. Bach Nghe people founded school, for example, only has eight teachers.

In Vinh Long province, according to the Vinh Long Department of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, there are 619 vocational school teachers in total. But only 394 of these are permanent, while the others work under short term labour contracts, or are visiting lecturers. The visiting lecturers and teachers with short term labour contracts cover 36 percent of the training curricula.

The province is lacking 240 permanent lecturers. There are two private run vocational schools and seven vocational centres in districts. None of them have half of the number of lecturers they require.

All the seven vocational schools in Tra Vinh province are also reportedly seriously lacking teachers. The Tra Vinh Vocational School has nearly 2000 students, but there are only 35 teachers. This means that every teacher has deal with 57 students. Under the current regulations, there must be one teacher for every 20 students.

According to Le Dinh Thuy, Head of the Personnel and Adminsitration Division of the Tra VInh Vocational School said that the existing teachers can cover 60 percent of the training curriculums. The school is trying to employ teachers not only from Tra VInh, but from HCM City and Nha Trang as well.

In 2010, the school needs to recruit 30 more teachers, but it has received only three applications so far.

“Under the current regulations, every teacher must not have more than 200 extra teaching hours a year. However, at Tra Vinh Vocational School, every teacher always has thousands of extra teaching hours a year,” Thuy admitted.

The Vinh Long Vocational School has very good material facilities with the teaching aids and equipments worth tens billion dong. However, there are only 1000 students who are following four study branches.

The school’s headmaster Nguyen Van Dung complained that the school is allowed to provide eight training branches. As the school is lacking teachers, it can only provide four.

Source: Tien phong