VietNamNet Bridge – The goal of physical education at general schools is to help students improve their health. However, this remains unattainable. The majority of Vietnamese students dislike the learning subject.

Amid the complaints by general schools that students nowadays are afraid of physical education, the Ministry of Education and Training decided that instead of assessing students’ ability by giving marks, teachers would only give comment “pass” or “fail.” The new assessment method has been applied since the second semester of the 2011-2012 academic year.

However, the changes in the way of assessing students’ ability could not help physical lessons bearable to students.

Le Xuan Giang, Headmaster of Nguyen Huu Tho High School in district 4 in HCM City, said that a lot of problems have been existing in physical education. In other countries, where there are good material facilities and qualified teaching staff, students themselves can choose the kinds of sports suitable to them.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese students, who have been overloaded with too many compulsory learning subjects and the heavy knowledge in every science subject, have to practice too many kinds of sports as well. They have to practice high jump, long jump, badminton, table tennis, swimming…

While Vietnamese are required to practice hard, there are not sufficient material facilities for them to practice. Most of the schools in Vietnam do not have playing fields, swimming pools and other necessary instruments.

At Nguyen Huu Tho High School in HCM City, students have to practice physical exercises in the open air on the school yard. When reporters arrived in the school, they saw the students playing badminton, ping-pong under the baking sun.

Since there were not enough sports instruments for all, the students had to play in turn. Those, who were waiting for their turn, had to hide themselves under the eaves of the classrooms.

There have been not enough teachers for physical education. Qualified teachers can only be provided by sports schools. However, the graduates of the schools do not want to work as teachers to earn modest money.

The lack of material facilities and teaching staff has made the physical exercise lessons in Vietnam quite different from any others in the world. Instead of practicing exercise, students just gather on the school yards and listen to the teachers’ theoretical lessons and see what the teachers do.

The HCM City Education and Training Department has signed an agreement with the Federation of Water Sports on training swimming to students, commencing from the 2010-2011. Under a decision of the department, 100 percent of the schools with swimming pools have to teach swimming as a curricular learning subject.

However, to date, the plan on swimming popularization remains on paper because of the difficulties in teaching staff, financial resources and the lack of swimming pools.

Only 14 schools in the city have swimming pools, including five primary schools, four secondary and five high schools. However, only 12 swimming pools can meet the standards for teaching swimming to students.

Pham Thuy Ha, Headmaster of the Nguyen Van Troi Primary School in district 4, which has a student winning a national prize in swimming, admitted that the student’s training was funded by the district’s authorities, while the school was not capable to train the student.

A teacher of a school admitted that his students do not attach much importance to the learning subject. They consider this an auxiliary subject in which they just need to obtain the minimum mark to be able to fulfill the training curricula. Therefore, he cannot attach the attention of his students during the lessons.

NLD