Many teachers have become redundant after general schools completed the restructuring process as requested by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).

Seventy-six teachers at 20 secondary schools in Phu Vang District of Thua Thien – Hue province have become redundant after the restructuring.

The same situation is seen in other districts of the province. Hundreds of regular members of state-owned schools in the province have suddenly become “unwanted”. They have had to seek other jobs besides teaching.

According to Le Dinh Phong, head of the Phu Vang district’s education sub-department, 18 out of of the 76 redundant teachers, who teach English, music and physical exercises, have left the secondary schools to work as primary school teachers.

The others have been asked to run extra classes for excellent or weak students or undertake other tasks.

Also, according to Phong, about 20 redundant teachers will be sent to the community education classes located in the communes of the district, where they will work as propagandists, i.e., they will promote the Communist Party and State policies, and the new laws.

The teachers will still receive salaries from the state budget.

“It is estimated that 20 teachers will retire by the end of 2015. The district does not intend to recruit more teachers to replace them,” Phong said.

Nguyen Van Dung, headmaster of the Phu Thanh Secondary School, said his school has seven “unwanted” teachers, specializing in biology, technology, literature and math.

Only one of them has voluntarily resigned from his post. Meanwhile, the school has to arrange new jobs for the remaining six teachers to keep them busy.

“In the past, teachers could get extra pay for remedial-teaching hours. But now the remedial teaching is undertaken by the redundant teachers,” Dung explained.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, deputy headmaster of Vinh Thai Secondary School, said it is very difficult to find new jobs for redundant teachers.

As the number of classes at Vinh Thai has been cut from 14 to 11, eight teachers have become redundant.

“We tried our best, but cannot arrange enough jobs for the high number of redundant teachers,” he said.

“As a result, a teacher only has 15-16 teaching periods a week instead of 19 as requested.”

Analysts said that major problems exist in general schools’ restructuring.

While some localities and at some education levels are seriously short of teachers, other localities have too many.

Phu Ninh district in the central province of Quang Nam, for example, has 50 redundant teachers, specializing in math and English. However, it lacks teachers in national defence education and technology.