Many primary schools in HCM City are still facing various difficulties in applying the new national English training programme due to teacher and funding shortfalls.

An English class at Nguyen Van Troi Primary School in HCM City’s District 4

Only 20% of grade-1 students in HCM City have been taught English under the new national training programme in the 2012-2013 school year.

Three districts in the city including District 6 and Binh Tan and Phu Nhuan have yet to implement the programme.

Le Ngoc Diep, Head of the municipal Department of Education and Training’s Primary Education Office, said they will try to apply the new programme for a half of grade-1 students in the 2013-2014 school year.

“We’re facing many difficulties, especially due to teacher shortages. If the problem is not dealt with, we may fail to meet the target that all primary students have access to the new programme by 2016,” Diep worried.

In order to apply the programme, several schools in District 5 have required their current English teachers to study new English teaching methods.

Vo Ngoc Thu, head of the district Office for Education and Training said despite applying the method, we’re still lacking English teachers. Twelve out of 16 primary schools in District 5 have applied the new English teaching programme in the 2012-2013 school year. We’ll discuss with parents to invite some more English teachers from the Philippines for this school year.”

An unnamed principle of a primary school in Phu Nhuan District said as English teaching is free under the new programme, only schools that have good financial resources could manage to apply it.

Tran Huu Vinh, head of Tan Binh District’s Office for Education and Training said that class overcrowding due to increased student numbers has been their biggest difficulty in realising the new English teaching programme. The number of grade-1 students has reached 10,000 this year compared to 7,000 last year, driving up the number of students in a class to more than 35 students.

Teachers discouraged by low pay

Le Ngoc Diep said teacher plays a significant role in English teaching. However, according to him, current pay was rather low, adding difficulties to the recruitment.

“Under the traditional English teaching programme, students had to pay VND50,000 (USD2.38) every months and such fees have been maintained for 14 years despite inflation.  Meanwhile, teachers at some schools receive half of these fees, which has discouraged them from taking up the career,” Diep said.

According to him, the Primary Education Office has proposed increasing payments for English teachers several times but no decision on the issue has been made as teachers of other subjects have the same claim.

Principals of several primary schools said the current teacher shortage is a result of the lack English teacher training for primary schools at universities.

Teacher shortages were predicted by education experts when the programme was announced.

Associate Prof. cum Dr. Nguyen Kim Hong, principle of HCM City University of Education said the entire country needs 39,750 English teachers, including 4,582 teachers for the southeastern region alone.

This means that the country would need to train 6,626 more English teachers per year through 2020. HCM City alone needs 294 more teachers per year during the period.

Meanwhile, the English Department of the university recruits only 150 students per year to train English teachers at high schools.

A private survey by Associate Prof. cum Dr. Nguyen Thi Ly Kha, head of the university’s Primary Education Department, showed that none of over 50 graduates of English teaching from the university have opted to work at primary schools for fear of the workload, low pay and a few chances for promotion or recognition.