VietNamNet Bridge – HCM City authorities have decided to set up high-quality schools, considering this a necessary step in building up a modern education in a period of global integration.

However, a question has been raised if the city still needs high-quality schools when it has schools for the gifted which also already considered a kind of high-quality schools?

Explaining the plan to set up high-quality schools, Huynh Cong Minh, Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said that the top goal of the city’s education is to improve the teaching and educational quality of schools. In order to do that, Minh believes, it is necessary to set up pioneering schools. “Together with gifted schools, high-quality schools will be the pioneering schools that we expect,” Minh said.

Schools must satisfy five factors in order to be recognized as high-quality schools. First, they must have the material facilities good enough to ensure that students can learn both in the morning and afternoon. Secondly, every class must have a low number of students and have equipment to ensure students’ self-study. Third, the schools must have enthusiastic teachers who can meet and exceed the national standards. Fourth, the curriculums must be integrated so that students can be educated individually. Fifth, the schools must apply transparent standards, so that teachers and students can assess themselves based on the standards.

Regarding the investment in high-quality schools, Minh said that the schools will be built up under the mode “both the state and people make investments”. Students’ parents will make contribution to the building up of schools by paying tuitions (every student of Le Quy Don High School now pays the tuition of 800,000 dong a month).

There are two measures of building up high schools, either to build new schools, or upgrade existing schools.

However, while the HCM City education department believes that high-quality schools are a good solution for building up a modern education in a period of global integration, some people still have doubts about the feasibility of the project. “How high should the quality of the high-quality schools be?” was the question raised for the education department.

Minh answered that the aim of the high-quality schools is to produce people with virtuous character, self-confidence and critical thinking. The numbers of students who can be moved up classes or pass the university entrance exams would also be considered an index for reference to decide if the schools can be recognized as high quality schools. If a school has 75 percent of students who can meet the requirements, it would be recognized as a degree 1 high-school, while degree 2 would be given to a school with 85 percent, and degree 3 to a school with 95 percent.

Most educators who applaud the model of high-quality schools also said that it is necessary to point out standards to which people can refer to recognize high quality schools

Nguyen Tien Thanh, Director of the Primary Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training said that in the high-quality education environment, students must be the center of education. In high-quality schools, students must be respected. Students of high-quality schools need to be trained to have necessary virtues and harmonized capabilities. Students of high-quality schools will have compulsory and optional subjects. In order to do that, there would be no other choice than to heavily invest in material facilities and a suitable management scheme.

“In building up high-quality schools, the socialization of education would play the most important role, because one should not expect to get money from the state budget,” said Le Minh Hoang, Director of Dong Nai province’s education department.

Source: Nguoi lao dong