The “compulsory” voluntary extra classes
A thing that can be seen regularly in Hanoi and HCM City is that students go directly to extra classes after the school hours in the school uniforms, because they do not have time to go home to change their clothes.
Some parents whose children are going to the Den Lu Secondary School in Hoang Mai district said that the school has given students a form of application for attending non-school hour classes. Parents have to fill in the form and submit to the school’s teachers, stating that parents ask the teachers to give extra teaching hours in order to help their children learn better.
In principle, attending extra classes is “voluntary”. The Ministry of Education and Training has also announced that teachers must not force their students to attend extra classes. However, in fact, students have no other choice than going to the classes and paying money for the private lessons, if they do not want to get bad marks. As a result, parents have to be indisposed to let their children to attend the “voluntary” extra classes.
A parent said that his child is going to the 6th grade this year, and the student has to attend extra hours in literature, mathematics, English, biology, history and physics. The school itself has admitted that 6th and 7th graders have to have at least 24 teaching periods per month, while the number of periods would be higher for 8th and 9th graders.
“I heard that the Ministry of Education and Training has cut some lessons from the curricula to ease the overloading this year. However, extra classes are still burdening my child,” a parent complained.
A mother, whose child is going to the Trung Vuong Secondary School in Hoan Kiem district, one of the famous “star schools” said that the teacher asked students fulfill 32 home exercises after two teaching hours at the school. With such a high number of home exercises, parents have no other choice than sending their children to extra classes, where they will be shown how to deal with the exercises.
Parents of the students of the Dong Da Secondary School said that all students have to go to extra classes, run by the teachers of the school themselves. “At first, I did not want to bring my child to the extra classes, because I thought my child had lessons with the same teachers at the school already. However, I later changed my mind, because I was told that the most important knowledge was only given at extra classes,” a parent said.
Private tutoring prohibited, but extra classes still set up
The Hanoi Education and Training Department has requested local schools to focus on practicing the self-learning skill for students and create most favorable conditions for students to read textbooks and reference documents themselves. High schools and continuation education centers must not organize extra classes for 10th graders.
The department has also announced that it will supervise the organization of extra classes, threatening to punish the institutions and individuals who force students to attend their extra classes.
However, the instruction by the local authorities seems to have not much significance. Schools still organize extra classes in a large scale, even though teachers themselves believe that it would be better to encourage students to learn themselves.
Nguyen Nhu Huong, a teacher from the Pham Hong Thai High School in Hanoi, said that teachers would have nothing to teach to 10th graders at extra classes. Meanwhile, Nguyen Quang Phuong from the Nguyen Truong To Secondary School said that if students spend too much time on extra classes, they will not have time for self-learning, while self-learning should be seen as a good method to improve one’s learning capability.
Source: Tien phong
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