For the last month, the life of Hoang Mai Van’s family in Ha Dong district, was chaotic because her children could not go to school.

As her husband is usually on business and away from home, Van has had to take care of the two children, a second and a fifth grader. She had to work from home in the week before Tet to have time to tutor them.

“I felt tired as I had to prepare meals, clean the house, work and remind them of online classes,” she said.

“As the younger child is still small, I had to attend online classes with him to help him log in to class and turn on the microphone,” she said.

After the Tet holiday, she had to go to the office, leaving the children with their grandmother. However, she still feels overloaded because "the phone rings all the time".

“I am at the office but I still have to watch over my children from a distance,” she explained. “They ring me so regularly during the classes, complaining they cannot enter the classes because the teachers have changed passwords for class entrance, or they cannot hear the teachers’ voice."

Van was excited when hearing that students would return to school from March 2.

“I will feel secure if children go to school. I hope that Covid is contained and everything will return to normal,” she said.

Having two children in the fourth and seventh grades, Dao Ngoc Anh in Ba Dinh district also complained that "too many troubles have arisen since the kids have had to stay at home".

She has to take her younger daughter together with her to the office every day, because the girl cannot manage herself at home. Meanwhile, the older daughter staying at home usually calls her to ask for help fix problems with computers.

However, what worries Anh the most is the quality of online teaching.

“My daughter complains that she sometimes cannot listen to the teacher because she is unexpectedly thrown out of the class and has to log in again,” she said.

Anh believes that online study will be good for adults and university students, but not for small children. The lack of concentration will make it ineffective for small children to study online.

Mai Thanh Huyen in My Dinh said the parents’ productivity has decreased since the day schools close the doors.

“I have so many things to do during the day: I have to print papers, send schoolwork to teachers, fix computer problems and keep watch over messages,” she said. 

Thuy Nga

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