Mongolia's Education Minister Naranbayar Purevsuren speaking at the press conference. Photo from the website of Ministry of Education. Public domain.

On August 21, Mongolian Minister of Education Naranbayar Puversuren revealed that the country was short of 4,217 school teachers, citing the number of unfilled vacancies nationwide. Of the open vacancies, 2,429 are in the capital city Ulaanbaatar.

Additionally, there is a shortage of kindergarten teachers with 508 open vacancies. Naranbayar shared that there are currently more than 825,000 school-age children. Their number will continue to grow at least until 2030, which will exacerbate the shortage of schools and teachers.

Here is a Facebook post with the press conference in which Naranbayar discussed issues in the education sector and the ministry's plans to address them.

According to the study carried out by the Ministry of Education, 2.88 percent of Mongolia’s labor force population are school teachers, which is below the international standard of 3 percent. The reduction in the number of school teachers has happened before. However, it has not been revealed to the public or discussed openly.

In the five years before 2024, the number of open vacancies with which schools started the academic year varied between 2,700 and 3,900. Only up to 80 percent of these vacancies were filled in the first quarter of each academic year.

By making this information available to the public Naranbayar aims to increase transparency in the education sector and urge stakeholders to start addressing the shortage of teachers as early as possible.

The short-term plan to address the shortage of teacher is the ministry’s special training program that will allow people with non-pedagogical higher education degrees to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to become teachers. Additionally, the ministry intends to unretire a certain number of teachers to mitigate the current shortage.

The long-term plan is to attract students to pedagogical faculties by subsidizing their studies. Under the new arrangement, current pedagogy students with GPA of 2.7 and those who pass entrance exams by getting 480 points out of 800 can study for free.

These measures are part of Naranbayar’s plan to reform the country’s education system by making it more transparent, effective, and children-oriented. Since becoming a minister in July, he has already introduced dozens of changes covering everything from pre-school to higher education.

Here is a Facebook post with Naranbayar's greetings on the new school year and the ministry's reform plans for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Perhaps the most impressive measure is Naranbayar’s promise and efforts to ensure there are enough kindergartens for all children. In this regard, the ministry has rented out additional buildings to accommodate more children and enrolling into a kindergarten is now done through an electronic platform, eliminating corruption risks.

His school related reforms include significantly reducing homework loads, introducing health lessons at schools, simplifying school uniforms from three piece sets to polo shirts, allocating days for school children to attend museums and theater to foster their creativity, and moving away from outdated assessments and teaching methods.

For example, Naranbayar has instructed teachers to stop measuring students’ reading speed and focus on making sure students understand what they read. Additionally, he has ordered schools to allow students from grade one to five to use pencils instead of pens, explaining that using pencils promotes the freedom to make mistakes and correct them without a fear of punishment.

The most notable change related to higher education has been Naranbayar’s appointment of O. Siilegma as the new head of the Education Loan Fund, which issues loans for higher education. Siilegma was one of the whistleblowers who reported about persistent and large-scale corruption at the fund, and she is now tasked with making it transparent and corruption free.

Prior to becoming minister, Naranbayar served as a director of one of the best private schools in the capital, Shine Mongol. Reforming Mongolia’s education sector is a far more daunting challenge and will require buy in and commitment from multiple stakeholders with diverging views and interests.