While many schools in Hanoi do not have enough classrooms for their students, a lot of other schools have been left idle or have become places to keep cars and warehouses.

This should be a kindergarten

The kindergarten is expected to cover an area of 2,000 square metres. As the construction has been left unfinished, visitors can see moss-grown walls and overgrown weeds.

Thanh, who lives in Room No. 207, C bloc of Nam Dong Residential Quarter, related that her family moved to the residential quarter in 1982. In 1990, the construction of the kindergarten began, and she was very happy because she thought her children can go to the near kindergarten. However, her son could not go to the kindergarten because the construction has not been completed. Her son is married now, and her grandson still cannot go to the kindergarten.

As the unfinished school has become a fallow land plot, local residents grow vegetables and bananas on the land. Four classrooms on the first floor have been completed, where some people are living. “I don’t know who they are and why they can live in the classrooms,” Thanh said.

As the Nam Dong Kindergarten has not been established, the Dong Da People’s Committee opened the Sao Mai Kindergarten which is not far from the unfinished kindergarten. Sao Mai is called a ‘kindergarten,’ but it is just the housing rooms of the old Nam Dong residential quarter.

There, at the Sao Mai kindergarten, are only small and dark staircases, while students have to spend break time in the corridor. A lot of pupils, who are now the primary and secondary students, once learned in dark classrooms.

“Nothing has been changed in the last 20 years. It is really a waste,” Thanh said. She related that a lot of parents have to bring their children to the kindergarten in Trung Tu ward because they don’t want their children to go to the classes with poor material facilities.

Classrooms turn into warehouses, school-yard into parking lots

The whole campus of the old Nguyen Truong To secondary school, 10,000 square metres, which has good material facilities, has been left idle or used for other purposes. The classrooms have been hired and become warehouses, while the school yard has become a parking lot.

The students of Nguyen Truong To Secondary School have been going to the new place in the last two years. “We have to move to the new place after we receive the notice from the district’s people’s committee which said we need to move as there were too many schools in the area,” said Nguyen Hai Khoat, Headmaster of the school.

There, besides the Nguyen Truong To Secondary School, are also the Kim Lien Kindergarten and Kim Lien Primary Schools, Dong Da Kindergarten, and Phuong Lien Primary School, which are all full of students and located near to each other.

Cam Quyen