LookAtVietnam – Parents of five-year-olds are forcing their children to attend pre-school in order to give them a head start when entering Grade 1, despite the fact that it is illegal.

First graders cheer-in the new school year of 2008-09. Children should enjoy their childhood instead of taking classes to learn subjects before they are ready to absorb them.

Chi said other parents had told her most five-year-olds attend pre-school to learn the Grade 1 programme ahead of enrolling in school and that her child would be at a disadvantage if she did not do similarly.

Be Kim Oanh, the mother of second-grader Duong Xuan Phuong, from Ha Noi, said that her daughter was far behind others who knew the alphabet and how to write when she entered Grade 1.

Dang Huynh Mai, former deputy minister of education and training, said that she understood parents’ motives for enrolling their children in pre-school.

“I know many parents who want their children to go to such classes to take exams in order to get into high quality schools,” Mai said.

Le Ngoc Quynh, a teacher at Kien An Highschool in the northern port city of Hai Phong, the father of a five-year-old, said that teachers’ expectations were too high.

“The reason that many children go to class before the right age is the meeting between parents and teachers, who want to profit from parents’ insecurity,” Quynh said.

However, Viet Nam’s well-known educationalist, Nguyen Khac Vien, said healthy development was more important than whether a child can once read or write.

“The prevention of classes outside schools must be the responsibility of local departments of education and training,” Director of the Department of Primary Education Le Tien Thanh said, adding that illegal classes should be closed.

Thanh added that it was a common misconception that public primary schools set entrance exams. However, he said that a number of private schools do require pupils to sit enrolment exams in maths, reading and writing if they are oversubscribed.

The head of the Primary Education Unit at Ha Noi’s Department of Education and Training, Pham Xuan Tien, said that schools are allowed to select pupils based on entrance exams only if they had more applicants than places, but he said it was difficult to monitor the situation at private schools.

Fading advantage

Meanwhile, Thanh advised parents not to push children to learn too early.

“They could be made afraid to learn if they are not as good as their friends, or become insular and neglect their studies when they officially enter grade one,” he said.

According to the deputy director of HCM City’s Department of Education and Training, Nguyen Hoai Chuong, the department carried out a survey which revealed that pupils who attended pre-school were more advanced in the beginning but that their ability to learn new things decreased.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News