Tang Van Hop from the Hai Duong provincial education department said the curricula were unreasonable. “Aerobics, relay, long jump and badminton are subjects designed for every grade. Students are afraid of long-distance running and weightlifting, which are too challenging,” he said.

Also according to Hop, the general physical exercises are monotonous. Meanwhile, books for teachers have become outdated as they were published more than 10 years ago, and the books lack reasonable guidance for students.

Dinh Duc Thien from the Bac Ninh education department said there was a lack of teaching staff. 

In the northern province, there are 88 physical education teachers for 155 primary schools, 96 teachers for 135 secondary schools and 129 teachers for 38 high schools.

“We have to use teachers of many different subjects for physical education,” Thien said.

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha confirmed that there are 80,000 sports teachers at general schools and preschools, but only two thirds of them are dedicated to physical exercises, while others undertake different teaching tasks.

As for primary education level, only 20 percent of schools have teachers in charge of physical education and there are only one to two teachers at each school. At least 26 percent of teachers running physical education lessons did not undergo pedagogical training and 11.7 percent only have intermediate and primary training.

Hanoi University Physical Education and Sports’ rector, Nguyen Duy Quyet, said that the teaching staff cannot satisfy requirements of society. They lack skills and knowledge to run new general education programs, including skills to organize extracurricular activities, presentation skills and necessary medical knowledge.

This is attributed to the curricula designed by sports and physical education universities and junior colleges.

To solve the problems, schools need to redesign curricula, employ qualified teachers, re-train existing staff and upgrade their facilities. However, in order to do all of this, schools need to have money and state management agencies will have to approve investment projects.

Nguyen Gang from the Hue City University of Physical Education also said that many schools lack playing yards and campuses.

“Since the land area is limited, students have to park if they want to do physical exercises,” he said. “Urban schools don’t have land, while rural schools don’t have money to build schools.”

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