I. The 15-year promise and the fiscal impossibility
For 15 years and across four different Ministers of Education, the goal has remained constant: increase teacher salaries so that educators can “live on their salary.” Despite Party resolutions mandating that teacher wages be prioritized at the highest level of the national pay scale, this commitment remains unfulfilled.
The urgency of this crisis is clear: as one delegate argued in the National Assembly, private tutoring (dạy thêm) is only a lifeline because base pay is insufficient.
However, the traditional solution—relying solely on the state budget—is a fiscal impossibility.
- The cost: If the government were to raise the salary of 1.24 million public teachers by just $100 USD per person, the annual cost to the national budget would exceed USD 1.5 billion. This marginal increase would still leave teachers struggling, yet such a massive budget expenditure would trigger immediate parity demands from other public sectors (police, military, doctors).
- The political barrier: Increasing public school tuition fees to offset costs is politically unpopular and often deemed contrary to Party policy. The recent backlash to a proposed fee increase demonstrates the extreme difficulty of implementing necessary, non-populist policy.
If we continue to rely solely on the central budget, this crisis will remain an inherited debt for generations of Ministers to come.
II. Strategic solution 1: Decentralizing accountability
The challenge of ensuring teacher income must be shifted from a Central Government burden to a decentralized political KPI.
I propose that the Government establish a new indicator for assessing the political competence of Provincial Secretaries and Chairpersons: the Average Public Teacher Income relative to the provincial GDP per capita.
- The CPI model: Like the annual Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), publicizing this ranking would create immense political pressure on local leaders to find solutions.
- Local solutions: Under this pressure, provinces would be incentivized to devise creative local mechanisms: calling for local business sponsorship, exchanging land rights for education funds, or building low-cost housing to attract and retain quality teachers. This competition would naturally raise teacher income across the board.
III. Strategic solution 2: Mobilizing private capital (PPP)
The most sustainable solution is to reduce the central government’s burden by accelerating the growth of the private education sector and authorizing public-private partnerships (PPP).
- Expand private sector scale: Private education currently accounts for only 2.5% of Vietnam’s sector size. If this share were allowed to increase to 30%, the pressure on the state budget to pay teacher salaries would drastically diminish, as private income would regulate wages in that large sector.
- Public-Private Partnership (PPP): We must formally authorize public schools to rent their unused facilities to private education providers. Public schools gain crucial additional revenue (via the Union Fund) to supplement low-income teachers’ wages. Private entities gain cost savings by not having to purchase expensive land for infrastructure.
- Example: Private partners can offer internationally accredited, 100% English-medium programs for a small fee (e.g., 500,000 VND/month), using the public school’s existing facilities. This dramatically increases quality and access for students whose parents can afford a nominal fee.
Opponents argue this creates inequality. This is a conservative, flawed perspective. Allowing service-based tuition (like service access in public hospitals) increases choice and quality without penalizing those who cannot afford it. We must stop the short-sighted view that educational equity means forcing everyone into a lower-common-denominator curriculum.
IV. The mandate for market realism
The solution to the teacher wage crisis lies not in printing more money, but in embracing market mechanisms while ensuring ethical standards. The Education Minister must be supported in pushing policy that:
- Increases private investment: Reduces administrative and regulatory burdens (e.g., slow licensing, high land costs) that discourage serious investors.
- Formalizes PPP: Creates clear legal channels for public-private cooperation, allowing resource utilization.
Only when we stop framing the teacher salary issue as solely a problem of central budgetary allocation and start treating it as a problem of market supply, demand, and resource optimization can this 15-year debt finally be paid.
