The Department of Education and
Training will choose several schools in HCM City’s inner districts as model
projects that will be expanded throughout the city by 2020.

At a
workshop on building high-quality schools yesterday, Dec 27, in HCM City, Huynh Cong Minh,
the department’s head, said the schools’ teaching would help students integrate
with the rest of the world.

He said
the schools would train staff in values and ethics. The high-quality schools
must meet minimum standards for facilities, teaching staff, management and
training programmes and have high co-operation between schools, families and
society.

Class
size will be reduced to 20 students, and teaching staff will have to meet both
ethical and professional qualifications.

Advantages

The city
had several advantages for creating such schools, Minh said. For example, the
number of primary teachers who meet the ministry’s standards accounts for 60 per
cent; kindergarten teachers, 30 per cent; high school teachers, 40 per cent; and
vocational teachers, 20 per cent.

The
department has been opening more training courses to increase the rate of
teachers who meet the ministry’s standards, Minh said.

Some
schools have been applying the new teaching methods, including teaching
according to each individual or teaching many subjects during one period.

The
schools include the Luong Dinh Cua Primary School in District 3, the Nguyen Binh
Khiem Primary School in District 1, Nguyen Van Troi Primary School in District
4, the Le Quy Don High School in District 3, and the Thanh Loc High School in
District 12.

Besides
the Ministry of Education and Training’s training programme, the city has its
own special council that creates training courses to correspond to the actual
ability of students.

The
city’s schools also have been changing management methods as required by the
ministry, Minh said.

Co-operation between schools and families as well as society has also been good,
he added.

However,
representatives of schools said reducing classroom size to 20 students would be
difficult because the city was faced with a shortage of classrooms.

Each
year, the city’s budget spends around 20 per cent on building and upgrading
schools, and each district has made detailed plans for schools, many of which
began in 2003.

There
are more than 1,500 schools at all levels from kindergarten and continuing
education throughout the city.

The
average number of children in kindergarten classes is 30; at the primary level,
38; at high school, 47.

Eighty
per cent of the teachers teach during the entire day at the primary level, and
30 per cent at the high school level.

At the
workshop, Minh noted that schools implementing the new high-quality model must
explain the benefits of higher standards so that they can understand the need
for higher tuition.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News