LookAtVietnam – Private schools lure more students by offering good learning conditions

Private schools lure more students by offering good learning conditions and, despite high tuitions, many parents still want their children to study at famous private schools.

“In mid-June, when students just left school for summer vacation, I contacted the Nguyen Khuyen Private School to enroll my son, but I was told there are no seats available,” revealed Dinh Quang Thanh, a parent in HCM City.

There are no official statistics about the number of students from other provinces at private schools in HCM City. According to Saigon Tiep Thi, the number could be as high as tens of thousands. An estimated 50-60 percent of total private school students come from other provinces, but the percentage is as high as 80 percent in some schools.

Huu Tien from Dak Lak province is a parent whose son has just been accepted in Quoc Van Saigon School. His family is ready to pay well, provided his son can pass the university entrance exam.

To attract students like Huu Tien’s son, private schools rushed to upgrade facilities and enlarge classrooms and dormitories. In previous years, educators tried to locate their schools in the inner city, but now they tend to set up schools in the suburbs, where land funds remains profuse.

Truong Vinh Ky High School, for example, in its first year of operation, had only one campus of 1600 square metres for 450 students. After 10 years of operation, the school now has two campuses with the total area of 15,000 square metres, with swimming pools, a mini-football playing field, basketball court and a dormitory housing 2800 students from 25 provinces. Nguyen Khuyen, Thanh Binh and Quoc Van Saigon School both have from two to five campuses and dormitories with thousands of beds.

Many schools even have canteens, student shuttles plu lab and Internet services, things that can persuade parents to enroll their children. Some have even installed cameras allowing parents to keep watch over learning and teaching.

Tran Thi Kim Quy, Deputy Headmaster of Thanh Binh Private School, explained that the school’s board of directors made invested heavily to build the dining hall that can serve 1000 students. “Good living conditions are important factors that can ensure learning quality,” she remarked, adding that the school does not aim to profit from the school’s canteen.

Besides good material facilities, private schools also attract students by boastring of the high percentages of students passing high school finals and university entrance exams. They also talk up the teaching staff, who, according to advertisements, were once ‘senior teachers at state-owned schools’, or ‘graduated university in France’, and are now ‘university lecturers’.

The schools have paid attention to organizing extracurricular activities and teaching life skills recently. A representative of Duy Tan School noted that students can go on excursions to tourist and historical sites for no extra fees.

While 100 percent of Vietnamese-owned schools target students in HCM City and other provinces, schools with the name ‘international’ target those from well-to-do families that want their children to study abroad. A Chau, Bac My, Nam My, Chau A Thai Binh Dung and Vstar School all teach students in accordance with the Vietnamese curriculum, but provide more English hours. A student at Chau A Thai Binh Duong (Asia Pacific) High School must have 80 English hours per month, while a primary school student has 60 hours per month, five times higher than a state-owned school student.

Source: Saigon tiep thi