VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has told primary school teachers not to give home exercises to students who have two learning shifts a day. But students still have too many exercises to do.

The headmaster of a primary school in Phu Nhuan district, HCM City, one day received a parent who complained that her son was asked to spend all of his holiday to solve math questions.

“My son said he needs to solve math questions and write down on seven pages, that he needs to write one page every holiday day,” the parent said. 

“At first, I thought that my son had to do homework because he was punished for some mistakes. But I later realized that all of his friends had to do math as well,” she said.

The school’s headmaster explained that the teacher told students to do homework during the holiday because she feared the students might play too hard and forget necessary knowledge. However, the headmaster agrees that this was not a good educational method.

According to Tran Trong Khiem from the Tan Phu Education and Training Sub-department, teachers only ask students to do homework if students have one learning shift a day at school (either in the morning or afternoon), because the time at school is not long enough to do all exercises. 

The students who have two learning shifts a day will not have to do exercises at home.

The students who have two learning shifts a day will not have to do exercises at home.

However, in some specific cases, teachers have the right to ask students to do exercises at home if they still cannot finish while they are at school.

In fact, teachers should not be blamed. Many parents ask teachers to give exercises to students to do during holiday because they don’t want their children to be idle. If children are busy doing homework, they will not have time to indulge in play.

A primary education expert said in other countries, students don’t have to do school works at home because the conditions there allow this. The curricula are not too heavy, while the infrastructure serves children’s entertainment. Extracurricular activities are also good. 

Meanwhile, the conditions in Vietnam are different. Students have to spend most of their time to follow the curriculum and are always under pressure.

MOET, in an effort to ease the burden on primary school students, released Circular 30 stipulating that teachers won’t give marks, but only comments, to students on their school works.

However, many parents fear that if their children do not feel pressure, they would become lazier. Therefore, they tend to force children to do more homework.


NLD