Vietnam - Hanoi nursery schools enroll pupils through… lucky draws

VietNamNet Bridge – The parents in Hanoi have been told that they would not have to stay all night queuing up for registering to study for their children any more. State owned nursery schools in Hanoi have decided to organize lucky draws to choose pupils.

Nguyen Anh Thu, a parent in Dong Da district in Hanoi, has suffered a constant anxiety for the last many months, because her son is going to nursery school after the summer. Thu decided that she and her husband would have to queue up in shifts to register study for the boy.

However, Thu has been told that parents would not have to spend sleepless nights to queue up for the registration, because nursery schools would open lucky draws to choose pupils.

However, the news cannot ease Thu’s anxiety. It’s merely a gamble, and Thu is not sure if her son can obtain a seat at a state owned school.

The problem is that Thu, like many other parents, want to send her children to state owned schools, which do not require overly high tuitions. However, while the number of children has been increasing rapidly, the number of nursery schools has not increased accordingly. As a result, Hanoi’s children have to “compete” with each other to obtain seats at the schools.

According to the Hanoi Education and Training Department, 85 percent children can go to state owned schools, while only 15 percent of them have to go to people-founded schools.

However, a lot of parents still complain that their children have been refused by state owned schools. It’s because most of the children wanting to go to state owned schools live in the 9 districts in inner city.

In Dong Da district, there are four wards which do not have any nursery schools. The local authorities plan to build four schools more, but to date, only two projects have been kicked off.

Deputy Chair of the Dong Da district Ha Thi Le Nhung said the Lang Thuong nursery school construction started on April 26, while the Trung Liet school construction would be kicked off in early May. Meanwhile, the local authorities still have to wait for the city’s decision about the land fund for the two other schools.

Since parents complained that they had to stay awake through the night to queue up for registering study for children, some nursery schools like Chu Van An and Kim Lien decided to open lucky draws to choose pupils for the 2011-2012 school year.

The ideas of the schools would be applied by all state owned nursery schools this year. A lot of parents have expressed their disagreement with the new enrolment way applied by schools, saying that the education of children must not be decided by such a “non-educational” method.

Nguyen Huu Do, Director of the Hanoi Education and Training Department, said that the children in Hanoi have equal opportunities to go to state owned schools. However, since the number of seats at state owned schools is limited, pupils would be chosen accidentally. Lucky draws would ensure the equity for all, while parents would not have to spend too much time on applying for study.

Doan Hoai Vinh, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Education and Training Department, said that in the 2012-2013 academic year, Hanoi plans to enroll 68,000 children for nursery schools and 327,000 for kindergartens.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chair of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc has requested schools to renovate enrolment methods to be sure that parents would not have to stay late at night to apply for study for their children. She has warned that districts’ education sub-departments would have to “take responsibility” if parents in the districts complain about the queuing.

Source: NLD

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