Who is responsible for the new VNEN school program?

(Baonghean) - VNEN has so far become a real obsession that follows us even into our sleep! But why is Nghe An still "somewhere it has stopped and some where it has not", and how long will this situation last?

The 2017-2018 school year has begun, and this is also the time when over 300 7th and 8th grade students at Hung Dung Secondary School (Vinh City) after 3 years of being "guinea pigs" for the new school model education program (VNEN) have returned to study with the normal textbook program like their peers.

But there are still thousands of students and hundreds of teachers who are "coping" and struggling with the "new school program" every day to avoid falling behind in knowledge compared to students studying the normal textbook program.

Students and teachers who are having to teach and study according to this “new school program” also “wish” to return to the current textbook program to avoid the situation of “studying VNEN books in the morning, and studying the regular textbook program in the afternoon”. But this depends on the pressure from parents at each school!

Overcrowded classrooms and inadequate physical conditions are the limitations that prevent teaching under the new school model at Hung Dung Secondary School from receiving approval. Photo: MH

In order to stop the VNEN program, parents of Hung Dung Secondary School have continuously sent petitions to the Department of Education and Training every year. In parent meetings, they also strongly protested, such as entering the 2017-2018 school year, more than 96% of parents and more than 93% of teachers of Hung Dung Secondary School continued to vote to propose ending the implementation of the new school program VNEN.

Before the 2016-2017 school year, hundreds of parents of Nguyen Trai Primary School (Vinh City) reacted strongly and declared that they would not send their children to school or transfer them to another school if the school continued to apply the VNEN program. Faced with that situation, the school had to stop the VNEN program and return to teaching the current program.

Many people wonder and worry why stopping a teaching program requires parents to react strongly, so the education sector only acts in a "hot-handed, ear-catching" manner, instead of having an assessment at the end of each school year, and specific instructions before entering the new school year?

This passivity has led to "everyone doing their own thing", where parents strongly object, the program is stopped, and where parents do not, it is "quietly" implemented.

Meanwhile, the leader of Nghe An Department of Education and Training hinted that "Nghe An education sector flexibly applies and absorbs the positive aspects of VNEN, but does not apply it completely", but in reality, which aspects are positive and which are not, the Department of Education and Training did not specify. Even in the conference to deploy the 2017-2018 school year of the entire Nghe An education sector, the "new school program" was not mentioned, but schools and teachers themselves continued to "grope and experiment".

And to deal with public opinion, the education sector no longer calls it the VNEN program but calls it the "new school program", but the teaching methods and textbooks still copy the original VNEN program!

In the end, it is the students who suffer, as in Hung Dung Secondary School, when returning to the normal textbook curriculum, many students had to supplement the knowledge they lacked in the process of learning VNEN. Although before that, both teachers and students had "coped" by "learning VNEN in the morning, and studying the old curriculum in the afternoon".

Every year, in addition to the VNEN program books, parents also have to buy additional textbooks according to the regular program. This school year, because they do not know in advance whether they will study VNEN or not, the school still implemented the purchase of VNEN textbooks for the 2017-2018 school year, so when this program stopped, hundreds of VNEN textbooks that students had bought were "shelved" - wasting hundreds of millions of dong!

The problem is that after 4 years of implementing VNEN, many shortcomings have been revealed, many provinces and cities have stopped this program. Because as many teachers participating in teaching the VNEN program commented: "Students are getting worse and worse, parents are rushing to find extra classes for their children, teachers are exhausted and stressed with the problem of "achievements".

"VNEN has become a real obsession that haunts us even in our sleep"! But why is Nghe An still "stopping in some places and not yet", and how long will this situation last? Who will take responsibility, or should we just let parents "decide for themselves" like recently? And "to stop or not" also needs a serious conference and assessment of the implementation of the VNEN program in Nghe An.

Duc Dung