Nguyen Thi Quyet Tam, Chairwoman of the HCM City People’s Council, also told the committee that it should order the municipal Department of Education and Training to carry out the review.
If the city’s outskirts districts like Binh Chanh, Binh Tan, Tan Phu, Hoc Mon and Thu Duc lacked schools, the committee should focus its investment in order to meet this demand, Tam said.
With the increase in migrant population in the city, especially in the outskirts, the city should give priority to building new schools in order to reduce overload at existing ones and improve the quality of education provided, she added.
The department reported that nearly 1,100 new classrooms had been opened for the 2011-12 school year with a total capital investment of VND3.7 trillion (US$177.9million).
In addition, 43 rooms for teaching gymnastics, 41 libraries and 51 rooms for teaching arts had also been set up for the new school year.
Hua Ngoc Thuan, vice chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, said that the funds allocated for upgrading and rebuilding classrooms was very large and increased every year.
Over the last three academic years, the city has allocated VND 2.9 trillion ($139.4 million); VND3.7 trillion ($177.9 million) and VND5.3 trillion ($254.8 million) for the purpose, he added.
However, many districts in the city still lacked classrooms, so the number of students in each classroom was still large, the meeting heard.
Moreover, many schools were not teaching classes for all grades from the whole day (morning until afternoon), as required by the Ministry of Education and Training.
Instead, they were dividing the time for different grades because of the lack of classrooms, district officials said at the meeting.
In Binh Tan District, for example, the number of students at all levels from kindergarten to high school had increased by 6,000 this school year, but only 286 new classrooms were added
Currently, the district has three wards – Binh Tri Dong, Binh Hung Hoa A and Binh Hung Hoa – that have no public kindergartens, making it difficult for the locality to meet the target of having all five-year-old children attend school.
Go Vap District is also in the same situation. The district has four new schools – one public kindergarten, one primary school and two secondary schools – this year. Two more schools – a kindergarten and a secondary school – are being built.
But the number of students going to school this year is 77,430, an increase of 2,196 compared to the previous year.
Currently, it lacked 484 classrooms to meet the demand, so 48 students had been packed into one classroom, said Dang Thanh Tuan, head of the district’s education office.
Tuan said some projects to build new schools in the district had to be stopped temporarily because the municipal People’s Committee had not allocated funds since the beginning of this year.
And, if the committee did not allocate more funds, the district would not be able to ensure enough classrooms for the coming years, he added.
The education office in District 10 also said that it had three projects to build primary schools as many wards were waiting for funds from the city’s budget.
Thuan promised that the committee would solve the fund shortage faced by these districts.
Failure to recruit
Education officials say HCM City has failed to recruit enough teachers for the new school year, with the shortage most acutely felt in kindergartens and primary schools.
The city targeted recruiting 4,905 teachers for the 2011-2012 school year, said Le Hong Son, director of the municipal Department of Education and Training. This included 955 and 2,362 teachers for kindergarten and primary schools respectively, Son said.
The remaining 1,500 teachers were required for high schools, he added.
While most high schools have managed to recruit enough teachers due to sufficient supply of new graduates, many kindergartens and primary schools have failed to meet the target, he said.
Tran Huu Vinh, head of Education and Training Office in the city’s Binh Tan District, said, “schools in the district need to employ nearly 400 teachers to meet the shortage faced by various schools, particularly primary schools.
“The number of pupils entering first grade in the district increased by 3,400 this school year, which requires the opening of 100 new classes,” Vinh said.
Public kindergartens in the district were only able to receive 4,000 five-year-old in the 2011-2012 school year and another 8,000 had to find seats in private kindergartens, he said.
Retired teachers had been invited to continue teaching as a measure to ease the shortage of teachers at primary schools in the district, he added.
The number of primary school students rose by more than 200 in the new school year, said Tran Trung Hieu, head of the Education and Training Office in District 12, adding that the locality is short of seven teachers for this segment.
Cao Thi Tuyet Mai, deputy head of the Education and Training Office in District 4, said that the office had to sign contracts with retired teachers or teachers without permanent residence in the city to deal with the shortage.
Kindergartens in the district have so far managed to recruit 24 teachers while the demand for the new school year is 40, Mai said.
The district was also facing shortage of 25 teachers for higher grades – 14 for primary schools and 11 for junior high schools, she said.
Nearly a million primary and high school students in HCM City started a new school year on Monday.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News
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