Vietnam - High-quality schools cry

VietNamNet Bridge – The HCM City People’s Committee has allowed Nguyen Hien and Nguyen Du High schools to follow the high-quality school model, raising the total number of schools following the development mechanism to three.

High quality education means high tuition

In the 2006-2007 academic year, the HCM City Education and Training Department chose Le Quy Don high school for its pilot program on developing high-quality schools.

The school then committed to follow a new education programs which many high targets and to provide good material facilities to serve the training. It promised to apply advanced teaching methods which allow to prove students’ ability, give intensive English lessons, so that students have the English skills good enough for later overseas study (TOEFL 550). Especially, every classroom would have a computer with an Internet connection, an overhead projector, a screen, and air conditioner.

While most parents fear that their children are put in the crowded classrooms with 50-60 students, the parents of Le Quy Don School do not have the worry, because there are 30 students only at maximum in every class.

However, not every student can enroll in high quality schools. While Nguyen Du and Nguyen Hien Schools keep reserved when setting up tuitions, intending to collect 800,000-900,000 dong a month from every student for the 2012-2013, Le Quy Don School plans to require higher tuition after six years of maintaining the tuitions at 850,000-890,000 dong.

Headmaster of Le Quy Don High School Pham Van Phiet said that the tuition needs to be raised to come in line with the goods price increase, and that the current tuitions have become “out of date” if compared with the market prices and the hard labor of teachers.

Phiet said the school needs to set up high tuitions because it needs to invest in material facilities and the teaching staff. In the first four years of operation under the new model, the high investments in material facilities led to the overspending of 38 percent.

Meanwhile, the teachers of Nguyen Du and Nguyen Hien Schools have complained that their income would decrease when the schools apply the new model. The problem is that while the number of students in every class reduces to 30, the tuition still stays at 30,000 dong a month.

Meanwhile, in order to satisfy the requirements of the high quality education program, the teachers would have to spend more time and efforts on their works.

A teacher of Nguyen Du School said that the “personalization teaching method” would be applied, which means that the teacher would not have bad students, even though they do not have to go to extra classes.

Parents only pay high tuitions for high quality education

The biggest pressure high quality schools have to bear is the high expectations from the society. Parents all demand high quality education which deserves the big sum of money they have to pay. However, there has been no definition about what “high quality education” means.

At present, people still view high quality schools with suspicion, which is the main reason which makes it impossible to multiply the model of high quality education schools.

Many people applaud the education socialization mechanism, under which parents contribute money to help schools provide better education services to their children. Meanwhile, others believe that the mechanism would generate the education inequality, since poor students cannot access the schools with good material facilities.

Regarding the issue, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education Department Nguyen Hoai Chuong said that the schools can consider exempting tuitions for poor students, thus keeping the schools’ doors open to students.

Source: Phu nu TPHCM

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