With the current number of children, Hanoi is lacking 700,000 square metres for pre-school classes. The lack of classes has led to the fact that 65-70 children have to share the same class.

In the inner city, six wards still reportedly do not have state-owned nursery schools: Trung Liet, Phuong Mai, Nga Tu So, Lang Thuong in Dong Da district, Thanh Nhan and Le Dai Hanh in Hai Ba Trung district. Meanwhile, six other districts in Hanoi, namely Ba Dinh, Hoan Kiem, Son Tay, Thanh Oai, My Duc and Quoc Oai, still have not nursery schools that meet national standard.

With the current number of children, Hanoi is lacking 700,000 square metres of land to build pre-school classes. As a result, 65-70 children are put together in one class instead of 35 children as stipulated by the current regulations. The city’s authorities have calculated that 14.5 percent of children at pre-school age and nearly 80 percent of children at nursery-school age cannot get care from pre-school educational establishments.

In order to settle the current problems, the Hanoi People’s Committee has built up a plan on improving pre-school educational quality in Hanoi until 2015 which is expected to cost over 3,000 trillion dong.

Of this amount, more than 650 billion dong will be used to build nursery schools which meet national standard, while the other 360 billion dong will be used to build new schools, over 1,000 billion dong to clear temporary classrooms.

If the plan is approved by the Hanoi People’s Council, Hanoi hopes to see 35 percent of children of under three able to go to nursery school, 95 percent of 3-5-year old children able to go to kindergarten and 100 percent of 5-year-old children going to classes. The city has also been striving to upgrade classrooms and have 50 percent of schools meeting national standard.

Seeking suitable schools to send children to proves to be the headache of many parents nowadays. Local newspapers have reported that a lot of parents have had to spend sleepless nights to queue in front of nursery schools to purchase application forms for the schools for their children.

Headmaster of Tuoi Hoa Nursery School Nguyen Thi Bau has blamed the overload of nursery classes on bad programming.

“When constructing high-rise buildings, investors should have thought of building schools as well. Six 24-31 storey buildings nearby have arisen, but there has not been any new school,” Bau said.

VietNamNet/VNE