A teacher is having to take care of 5-10 classes and teach from 20-40 lessons a week.

MOET wants 100% of pupils nationwide from grade 3 from the 2016-2017 school year to receive four English classes a week.

The project also requires all English language teachers in Vietnam to reach an English level proficiency of CEFR B2 for primary and secondary school teachers and CEFR C1 for high school teachers.

This seems unlikely to be met due to a serious lack of teachers.

However there are major obstacles to the ministry's fantastical proposal. According to a report drawn up by MOET's own Primary Education Department, there are 15,883 primary schools nation-wide with 89,465 classes. With the current numbers of 21,430 English teachers, the current number of qualified English teachers would have to take care of 5-10 classes and teach from 20-40 lessons a week.

By the 2015-2016 school year, more than 711,000 primary school pupils will have failed to receive any English classes, statistics from the MOET said.

Some localities are facing more serious shortage than others, such as Cao Bang Province which has 275 schools but only 86 teachers of English.

Together with the teacher shortage, the number of teachers who meet the actual required qualifications is also low.

“By July 2015 only 5,933 out of 18,922 teachers of English (or 31.37%) meet the required qualifications,” the report said.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training, Nguyen Vinh Hien stressed the need to train more teachers of English for local schools.

“Schools should develop a detailed plan to recruit more teachers,” Hien said. “But we should also pay special attention to the quality. All the teachers have to meet the requirements on qualifications.”

Hien also suggested that schools can recruit final-year students at universities if cannot find enough teachers or while sending their teachers to further training.