VietNamNet Bridge – Like Hanoi, HCM City authorities soon realized the danger put before the pre-school education of the city, once the education socialization policy started.

Vietnamese children suffer from policy on education socialization

Nguyen Thi Kim Thanh, former Head of the pre-school education division of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said the system of private schools developed very strongly in 2007-2008. However, a lot of problem arose in the private school development movement.

At that time, local newspapers repeatedly reported the child abuses cases occurred at household run classes. Quang Thi Kim Hoa, a babysitter, was found as having continuously slapped the face of a child when the child cried, and was sentenced to jail.

The local authorities then realized that it would be a blunder to put a heavy burden on people by forcing them to arrange seats for their children at nursery schools themselves.

The private schools which can provide high education quality always set very high tuitions of 2-3 million dong, unaffordable to the majority of people. Meanwhile, the state owned school system did not develop due to the policy on education socialization. As a result, parents had to bring their children to household run classes where there were poor material facilities and unqualified teachers.

After a series of child abuse cases were discovered, the HCM City authorities gathered a meeting to discuss how to improve the quality of pre-school education. At the meeting, the city’s officials heard that the city did not lack money to build state owned schools for children.

However, the Resolution No. 05 on education socialization would hinder the state owned school development plan. The resolution said no more state owned nursery schools would be built in the localities which have socio-economic difficulties.

At the meeting, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, who was then Deputy Chair of the HCM City People’s Committee stated: “HCM City needs more state owned nursery schools. If we don’t build more schools, we will feel guilty about children.”

“Former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet said when he was Chair of the HCM City People’s Committee that the city needs to reserve the best things for children. I believe that the city never regrets money spent on building schools for children,” Kim Thanh said.

The death of a policy

When the Resolution 05 was released, it was praised as a good idea to develop the national education system. The pre-school education socialization policy was believed to mobilize all possible resources in the society to the development of the national education.

However, some experts then found a lot of problems of the resolution. Saigon giai phong in 2006 published an article of Ngo Dat, who suggested that the government should adjusted the percentages of children who can go to state owned schools.

Dat wrote that in education sector, especially pre-school education, the State needs to play the key role in developing the school system instead of depending on other resources in the society, and that at least 50 percent of children can go to state owned schools.

Hanoi, HCM City and then many other localities started complaining about the Resolution 05. Experts then found out that the target of having 70-80 percent of children going to non-state owned schools could not be fulfilled in any localities.

The story has a happy ending: the government promulgated the Decision No. 60, affirming that the state budget plays the major role in the implementation of the plan to develop pre-school education in 2011-2015.

Thuy Nhu