Nguyen Ba Ninh, director of the Ninh Thuan provincial Education and Training Department, said there was a serious shortage of teachers for nursery schools in the province.

The department and nursery schools are able to find enough teachers, but it cannot get approval from the Ministry of Interior Affairs (MIA) on its recruitment plan.

“MIA fixes the state personnel and it does not allow us to recruit more,” he said. “In principle, we can employ teachers under fixed-term labor contracts, (wherein teachers work for schools for fixed periods, and they are not regular members of personnel who receive salaries from the state budget). However, the local budget does not have money to pay them,” he said.

Ninh went on to say that he reported the problem to the Minister of Interior Affairs when he paid a working visit to the province. However, no solutions to the problem have been offered.

“At nursery schools, there are no clerical staff, security guards or health care officers,” he said. “And there is no cook who prepares lunches for children. The teachers have to take on all the work. They have to both teach children and cook meals for them.”

Nguyen Thuy Hong, a senior official of MOET, confirmed that a teacher shortage at nursery schools was a problem faced by all provinces and cities.

Under the national program on pre-school universalization for 5-year-old children by 2015, Vietnam would need 35,592 more teachers, while only 13,612 have been recruited.

Thus, nursery schools throughout the country still lack 20,600 teachers. It is difficult to recruit teachers in remote areas where there are many ethnic minorities.

“Schools in remote areas are seriously lacking teachers, especially those who can speak ethnic minority languages,” Hong said.

“Under current policies, local authorities can send students to training courses, who will return to the localities after graduation. However, local authorities cannot recruit the graduates because of strict requirements stipulated in Decree No 29 on civil servant employment and management,” she explained.

Meanwhile, in big cities, nursery schools find it difficult to recruit teachers because of the low wages they offer.

The National Assembly’s reports on pre-school education also pointed out that the unreasonable pay mechanism makes it difficult to recruit teachers for nursery schools.

Pham Van Thanh, chair of the Vietnam Education Trade Union, said the salaries for nursery school teachers were too low for such a demanding job.

A teacher has to work 10-15 hours per day, and receives only VND1.5-2 million a month. Meanwhile, the teachers, except for those in HCM City, do not have any extra income.