HCM City (VNS/VNA) - The country’s pre-schools face and will continue to facea shortage of teachers until 2025, the head of the Ministry of Education andTraining’s pre-school education department has warned.

Speaking ata conference in HCM City earlier this week, Nguyen Ba Minh said theshortage would become more serious in remote areas in the Central Highlands,the north and the Mekong River Delta.

According toministry statistics, the current ratio is 1.82 teachers per class, meaningthere is a shortage of more than 45,000 teachers based on standards it has set.

Besides,only 73.7 percent of teachers meet standards spelt out in the 2019 EducationLaw.

The numberof pre-schoolers increases by 250,000 every year, and this puts great pressureon schools and teachers. In big cities, many teachers quit their jobs becauseof the hard work involved despite low salaries.

In futurepublic kindergartens plan to offer babysitting services after school toincrease their and teachers’ incomes.  

Besides, theprivate pre-school growth target of accounting for more than 25 percent of thetotal number of kindergartens by 2020 is difficult to achieve, especially inthe Central Highlands, the Mekong Delta and some northern mountain provinces,according to Minh.

There are3,180 of them now, or 20.6 percent of the total number, and 15,914 smallnurseries.

Manyprovinces and large cities face a shortage of land for setting up privatekindergartens.

Kindergartensat industrial parks do not yet benefit from incentives related to taxes andland lease.

Minhsuggested that local authorities should set up a clear legal framework andmethods to incentivise people to invest in kindergartens.   

In HCM City,879 out of its 1,346 kindergartens are private.

According tothe ministry, the number of private and public kindergartens in the countryincreased by 2,634 in the last 10 years while the number of children went up by1.5 million.

As ofDecember last year all 63 provinces and cities were providing compulsoryeducation for five-year-olds.  

DeputyMinister of Education and Training Ngo Thi Minh said her ministry wouldcontinue to petition the Government to address problems provinces and citiesface. 

She saideducation and training departments and authorities in provinces and citiesshould take the initiative to set up more kindergartens and create morefacilities for them, and train teachers to gradually end the shortage ofteachers.

Educationwould be made compulsory for four-year-old children by 2030, she said.

Under newGovernment policies, an allowance of at least 800,000 VND (34.6 USD) would bepaid to teachers at private kindergartens in industrial parks by localauthorities, she said.

Minh addedthat the Government would also pay allowances to private kindergarten teachers toattend training courses./.