LookAtVietnam – Children without schools to attend, kids forced to study in temporary classrooms. These are the realities of preschool education in the Mekong Delta.

Borrowing rooms

Le Phuong Tue, Head of the Preschool Education Division of the Ca Mau Education and Training Department, admitted that kindergartens now have to “borrow” 245 rooms from primary schools. Yet the borrowed rooms are not large enough and the furniture is not suitable for the age group.

Tran Truc Linh from Dam Doi district’s education sub-department said that six out of 16 communes in the district do not have nursery schools. Another 26 Ca Mau communes reportedly do not even have nursery schools. In Soc Trang province, 18 communes still do not have nursery schools.

Half of the children at Co Do Nursery School in Can Tho City are now learning in a 87 square meter room borrowed from a private household, which serves as the dining room and bed room.

Meanwhile, the other 50 pupils, learning in a borrowed room at Co Do Primary School, do not know where they will meet when the school needs to take back the room.

Can Tho City reported that it needs 1,382 classrooms, but has only 895 rooms, or 64.7 percent of the demand.

Where are the teachers?

Nursery schools cannot attract teachers because the monthly pay cannot cover teachers’ basic needs.