The current status of the quality of preschool teachers in An Giang province

Abstract

Preschool teachers are one of the important factors that determine the educational quality of a unit. Currently, according to the statistics from the education sector of An Giang province, the whole province has 197 public and private preschools, nurseries, and kindergartens with 4,637 managers, facility owners, along with teachers and staff. The professional qualifications of preschool teachers meet the standard of 99.0%, of which 72.6% are above the standard. The mainly used research methods are questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews. The research results of 502 preschool teachers on the quality of preschool teachers at both public and private schools show that the majority of preschool teachers are quite young: 62.8% of them are under 35 years old; 29.5% are between the ages of 36 and 45; and 7.8% are over 45 years old. Especially, 93.8% of them affirm that they have good capacity and qualities, love their jobs, and are attached to their schools. Only 5.4% of them are still hesitant and 0.8% of them do not think that they have enough capacity, qualities, and love for their profession as well as stick their schools. However, now, preschool teachers have some limitations and inadequacies in the face of innovation and integration requirements. They still lack foreign language proficiency, testing and evaluation competencies, and information technology application skills. Along with the above shortcomings, a local shortage of teachers still exists in some localities in the province. In addition, the results of in-depth interviews with the 36 managers and 36 preschool teachers also showed that some preschool teachers need to be trained in some skills related to their profession. The article proposes the solutions: (1) ensuring a sufficient number of preschool teachers; (2) improving their professional qualifications and professional management methods; (3) organizing good training and self-training for teachers; (4) reforming the salary regime, enhancing care for their life, and improving working conditions; and (5) the education sector needs to have appropriate policies and incentive activities to motivate preschool teachers in their career.