Hanoi (VNA) - Hanoi faces a shortage of high school teachers that canteach in English, requiring universities to train more students adept at thelanguage to meet demand.

There is a limited number of high school teachers in Hanoi capableof teaching their subjects in English, according to the city’s Departmentof Education.

The demand for English-speaking teachers for different subjects is particularlyhigh at international schools and private schools where foreign studentsattend.

“We have to hire all native English-speaking teachers because Vietnameseteachers who can teach in English are so rare,” said Pham Thi Minh An,principal of the Olympia High School, part of the Olympia inter-level bilingualschools in Hanoi.

The Hanoi Academy International Bilingual School has the same issue, accordingto Nguyen The Dai, chairman of the school’s board of education.

“Vietnam lacks teachers with international degrees in teaching, and teaching isnot a field that students who are able to study abroad often choose,” he said.

The shortage is not new. Over the last three years, some 400 technical Englishclasses have been provided for lecturers of scientific subjects at theUniversity of Foreign Languages and International Studies, of both basicEnglish and technical English lessons.

However, the majority of lecturers don’t feel confident enough toteach in English by the end of the programme, according to reports from thedepartment.

The same results were shown for a pilot project of teaching scientific subjectsin English at a number of high schools in Hanoi, which has been implemented fortwo years.

Despite having received 7-9 months of English training, teachers at these highschools couldn’t get familiar with technical terms and weren’t able to planlessons in English, according to reports.

This is a call for teaching faculties to heighten their focus on teaching inEnglish so that students will be confident teaching in the languagewhen they graduate, said Chu Xuan Dung, deputy director of the city’s educationdepartment.

“It will help meet the rising demand of high schools and reduce costs [ofhiring native English teachers] for the schools and parents,” Dung said at arecent conference in Hanoi.

Having foreseen the demand, in the 2013-14 school year, the Hanoi NationalUniversity of Education (HNUE) started a new programme, which uses English toteach their maths students.

The programme’s first batch of students graduated last year after receiving positivefeedback from the high schools where they interned, according to Professor NguyenVan Minh, principal of the university.

Three graduates of the programme have been recruited by the Olympia High Schoolfor the 2016-17 school year after a two-month internship.

Olympia High School’s principal Phạm Thi Minh An said it’s an honour to welcomethe new teachers, but said the internship should be for six months instead oftwo so that they have more time to get familiar with the school’s environment.

Education chairman Nguyen The Dai of the Hanoi Academy agrees that internshipsshould be longer and start earlier.

“Teaching students should be proactive in contacting schools that they aim towork at, and ask for apprenticeships from their first year atuniversity instead of waiting to be assigned one by their lecturers,” hesaid.

It was not easy to create an environment where students could “live with”English and get used to using technical terms, said HNUE’s principal Minh.

They also don’t have many choices for internships since most high schools inthe capital city don’t teach in English, he said.

Dr Nguyen Van Trao, HNUE’s viceprincipal, said that the school will continue to train teachers of physics,chemistry, biology, natural sciences and information technology to teach inEnglish in the coming years, aiming to “quench the thirst” of internationalschools of English-speaking teachers.

The city’s education department will continue to integrate English teachinginto the high school curriculum at more schools in the future, said deputydirector Dung.

Specifically, students at Chu Van An National High School in the city will getto take part in a British A-level programme in the next school year, for whichthe department has recruited physics, chemistry and biology teachers, he added.

The department will provide technical English training for teachers at fivelower secondary and upper secondary schools (high schools) in Hanoi that teachmaths, physics, chemistry and biology in English, he said.-VNA