Many remote villages still lacked kindergartens in the 2008-09 school year, a Government official said at a seminar on Viet Nam’s early childhood education . . .

Hoa Hong Kindergarten pupils in Ha Noi. About 15 per cent of communes across the country do not have adequate teaching facilities for children under six.

“Difficulties with infrastructure, school equipment and teacher shortages have created a wide gap in the quality of early childhood education between ethnic minority, poor and rural areas and cities and where socio-economic conditions are favourable,” she said.

However, Viet Nam experienced an upward trend in pre-school education during the 2008-09 school year.

A report from the department revealed a 6- per- cent increase in the number of children at kindergartens and nurseries against the previous academic year.

The report also showed that the rate of undernourished children under six at schools throughout the country fell by 2.1 per cent.

Reforms of teaching methods and the use of IT in management at nurseries were also boosted, said Ha.

In her address at the two-day seminar co-organised by the MoET and the World Bank, Australian education expert Dr Wendy K Jarvie said Viet Nam still had a long way to go to ensure that all six- year-old children were well-prepared for primary school.

The former director of the Australian Government’s Office of Early Childhood Education and Child Care said the country also needed to make a lot of efforts to achieve international pre-school education standards.

Viet Nam needed an overall policy framework for child development and a systematic policy framework for disadvantaged children, particularly ethnic minority children or those in remote areas, she said.

She also suggested that more ethnic minority people be professionally trained as pre-school teachers and improvements made to the quality of teacher training, particularly at the provincial level.

Raising parents’ awareness about the necessity of kindergarten attendance for their children and improving school and equipment conditions was also essential, she said.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thi Nghia said Viet Nam would have to mobilise significant resources to achieve the targets set by the national plan on making pre-school education universal by 2015.

In addition to Government and local budget funds, and public contributions, the country would need support from international donors, she said.

In the 2008-09 academic year, Viet Nam had nearly 12,400 kindergartens across the country, including nearly 6,900 public schools and 5,500 private ones, reported the Pre-school Education Department.

More than 3.6 million children attended these schools.

The new pre-school education curriculum has been followed in some areas since the beginning of the 2009-10 school year.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News