Special education in HCM City: teachers’ enthusiasm not enough

Published: 28/04/2009 05:00

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VietNamNet Bridge – The lack of a reasonable treatment mechanism proves to be the main reason behind the serious shortage of teachers in specialised and inclusive schools for children with mental retardation.

Kindergarten No 9 in district 11, HCM City has a teacher who teaches children there with a special method, giving suitable lessons to children depending on their defects. But only for the past two years.

Nguyen Nu Lan Huong, Headmaster of Kindergarten No 8 in district 3, related that the kindergarten has 15 deaf children, but it only has two teachers qualified to work with deaf children. “The two teachers really have a lot of patience and enthusiasm, if not they would not stay here,” Huong said.

The Hy Vong (Hope) School in Go Vap district has 120 students with various disabilities but only 18 teachers. According to Headmaster Huynh Ba Tran, the school needs 14 more teachers.

In fact, many teachers have not been trained as special education teachers. Most of them come from normal kindergartens or primary schools, and they teach they disabled children because they love the children. Meanwhile, there has not been any curriculum specifically designed for these children.

Pham Tuan, Headmaster of the Specialised School in district 10, HCM City, said that the school lacks documents for teaching and learning in Vietnamese language. Teachers just take notes about every student in order to give reasonable lessons.

The HCM City Education and Training Department has asked the Education Development Support Centre and Nguyen Dinh Chieu Specialised School to join forces with the HCM City University of Education to open 11 classes to train teachers for specialised and inclusive schools. However, only a few teachers are able to attend the training courses, while the majority cannot get regular training in teaching students with disabilities.

…Because of lacking reasonable treatment mechanism

In the 2007-2008 school year, HCM City had 26 specialised schools, including 17 state-owned and 9 non-state schools. There are 554 inclusion schools, including 157 kindergartens and 262 primary schools.

This school year, the city has 5,137 students, an increase of 1,116 students over last year. These include 2,243 students learning at inclusive schools, and 2,368 at specialised schools. There are 2,441 teachers in inclusive schools, including 413 teachers for kindergartens and 1,096 for primary schools.

It is clear that teachers at specialised schools have to work harder than normal schools, but they do not receive higher salaries. At Kindergarten No 8 in district 3, teachers have to take care of 40 students and pay special attention to deaf students in the class by drawing up special syllabuses for the students.

According to Nguyen Thi Tiet Hanh, Deputy Head of the Pre-school Education Division under the HCM City Education and Training Department, there is no special treatment mechanism for teachers at schools for the disabled.

Vo Thi Thanh Truc, a teacher at Hy Vong Specialised School, related that her class has eight children with mental retardation who could only pronounce one word after several months of learning. However, Truc said she feels happy with the children and she does not intend to leave the school.

Hanh said that the local education and training department has proposed to apply special treatment mechanisms for teachers at specialised schools. The teachers will either be able to receive teaching allowances or get higher basic salaries. Hanh also said that a regulation on the operation of specialised schools would be promulgated in some days.

VietNamNet/SGTT

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