Child abuse cases occur at private schools

Three former teachers at the Mam Xanh Nursery School in HCMC have become ‘famous’ for their teaching methods. The instruments they used to teach children, from 12 months to 5 years old, were their legs, hands, ladles, plastic cans, aluminum tubes, brooms and knives.

When the nursery school was forced to stop operation, its owner, Linh, was summoned by an investigation agency. She affirmed that it was necessary to beat the children to force them to listen to teachers.

Most recently, a nursery school teacher in district 1, HCMC, was seen beating the children during nap time. She asked the children if they were animals or humans, and why the children did not listen to teachers and sleep like humans.

Le Quynh Hoa, a mother in Hanoi, said she was moving heaven and earth to seek a good nursery school for her son, 4 years old. 

“The grandmother, who has been taking care for him, will return to her home village after the summer,” she explained.

“I am afraid I cannot enroll my son in a state-owned school. I doubt the quality of private schools,” she said, adding that most child abuse cases occur at private  schools.

In 2014, two babysitters in Thu Duc district, HCMC, were sentenced to three years of imprisonment and forced to pay VND20 million in compensation for mental damages.

However, more and more child abuse cases have been reported.

Nguyen Thi Hong Diem, deputy headmaster of Sao Mai Nursery School, commented that the quality of private preschoolers is problematic. 

In general, private schools don’t set high requirements on teachers’ qualifications and skills. Household-run classes even use women who have not followed any training course. 

The owners of private establishments offer low pay to teachers, so they cannot set high requirements.

Also according to Diem, private nursery schools, by nature, are ‘businesses’. The owners of the schools, therefore, put emphasis on making profits, not on educating children. 

They try to attract as many children as possible, and cut operation costs, including pay for teachers, rather than try to recruit qualified workers.

In most cases, the owners of the schools are not teachers and are not trained in education. 

The number of children who need to go to nursery school is increasing by around 250,000 every year.

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