Though Hanoi has been spending money and applying many measures to improve
pre-school education, it is still facing a lot of problems. The city is seriously lacking nursery school
teachers.

Teachers seriously
lacking

Hanoi is a big city, where
the demand for going to nursery school is very high. However, with great
efforts, the percentage of children who can go to school is still the highest
in the country: 85 percent of children can go to kindergartens and 25 percent
of children to nursery schools. In the 2010-2011 academic year, with 99.4
percent of children at the age to go to schools, Hanoi is one of the few localities which have
nearly reached the target of universalizing education for 5-year-olds.

In
order to obtain the figures, Hanoi
has been spending a considerable portion of its budget on building schools and
applying measures to make nursery school
teachers equal to teachers at grammar schools.

However,
educators have pointed out that there
remains one big problem: Hanoi
is seriously lacking nursery school teachers.

Dam
Quoc Khanh, Deputy Chair of Hoang Mai District’s People’s Committee said that
the Education and Training Department and the Department of Interior Affairs should
find solutions to settle the problem that nursery school teachers now only want
to work for private run schools instead of state-owned schools.

Cao
Bich Lan, Deputy Chair of Hoan Kiem District, related that last year, she
witnessed 10 teachers of the school leaving her school for private schools.
“They have better salaries in the other
schools, and they can also receive social insurance. We have a good working
environment, but if teachers do not keep their mind on their work, we will lose
them,” Lan said.

In
many districts, not only teachers, but management officers are also seriously
lacking. La Thi Bich Nhung, Deputy Chair of Thanh Tri District’s People’s
Committee said that there are only 62 teachers who are regular members of the
personnel, which means they can get salaries from the state budget, including
53 management officers.

“Thanh
Tri needs 16 management officers for nursery schools. There are nine regular
members of the personnel, but they cannot be appointed to the posts of
managers, because they are not qualified,” Nhung said.

“As
we do not have enough regular staff members, we have to appoint teachers who
are working under fixed term labor contracts into the posts of managers,” she
added. According to Hanoi’s
Department for Interior Affairs, there are 86 such cases in the city.

Hanoi does not want to recruit nursery school teachers?

Under
the plan to improve pre-school education in Hanoi by 2015, about 500 semi-state owned
nursery schools in the city will be shifted to operate under the model of
state-owned schools with self-managed finances.

Under
the current regulations, every such school will have six persons who can
receive salaries from the state budget. As such, Hanoi needs to recruit 3000 teachers for the
schools. However, for many reasons, until 2009, the city still “owed” 3000
teachers to the 500 schools.

The
city’s authorities also decided that in 2011, nursery schools throughout the
whole city will recruit 5000 teachers in order to popularize education for
5-year-old children. However, to date, districts still have not been allocated
“quotas”.

Source: Tien phong