When will temporary schools and borrowed classrooms end?

(Baonghean) -Currently in our province there are more than 200 classrooms that are borrowed or temporary. This situation has existed for many years but up to now there has been no effective solution...

A few years ago, the story of Hong Son Kindergarten - a school located in the center of Vinh City but students had to study in the cultural houses of the block, left many parents with thoughts. Over the past two years, it was thought that when the school was moved to a new location, parents and students of the school would no longer have to worry about temporary schools and borrowed classrooms. However, recently when we returned to visit the school, we were told by teacher Le Thi Hong Anh - the school's principal: The school moved here on August 31, 2009, but in reality, for the past three years, on paper, we still do not have a school, we are still having to "live off" at Hong Son Primary School...

A divided classroom at Hong Son Kindergarten (Vinh City)

Taking us around the school, the principal showed us the problems when students of a kindergarten have to study in classrooms of older brothers and sisters. None of the school's 8 current classrooms are up to standard, some are too big, and some are too small. Moreover, according to the design of kindergarten classes, every classroom must have a corridor behind to arrange chairs, dry towels, and clothes, but Hong Son School does not have one. The most difficult thing is the restroom. Normally, each kindergarten class will have a private restroom, but at Hong Son School, the whole school only has one restroom shared by about 300 people, which is extremely inconvenient. Even the office of the Board of Directors is extremely cramped, having to "cram" 4 to 5 people in one room. Teacher Hong Anh added: The school has also planned many times to build new or repair old classrooms, but the school's property still belongs to the elementary school, so we cannot decide. At Cua Nam Primary School, although the school has a "name and status", because the area is too small, there are not enough classrooms. Students of grades 13 and 14 still have to borrow the block's cultural house to study.

At Nghi Duc Kindergarten (Vinh City), the school has encountered difficulties because for many years the school has been located in a planning area and therefore has not been built. To meet the demand, for the past two years the school has had to use plastic walls to temporarily build more classrooms, which is extremely cramped...

The shortage of classrooms at all levels in our province is still quite serious, especially in preschool education, at the end of the 2010-2011 school year, there were still over 200 classrooms lacking, mainly concentrated in Thanh Chuong, Quynh Luu, Anh Son, Tan Ky, Quy Hop, Dien Chau districts. At primary and secondary school levels, the situation of borrowed and temporary classrooms is also a difficult problem in Tan Ky, Tuong Duong, Hung Nguyen districts... Usually, places with many borrowed and temporary classrooms are in disadvantaged areas, where people's living standards are still low, so the government and people do not have many conditions to build new schools. For example, in Thanh Chuong district, the district has about 60 temporary classrooms, concentrated in Thanh Phong, Thanh Xuan, Thanh Mai, Thanh Lam communes. In Quynh Luu district, although the education sector and localities have made many efforts in recent years, in coastal and mountainous communes such as Quynh Tan and Mai Hung, borrowed classrooms have not been eliminated, and students still have to study in the commune's cultural houses. The fact that many classrooms are still in temporary use has greatly affected the quality of teaching and learning in schools. In many places, the children's school schedules have been interrupted because the communes and wards need to use cultural houses. The children's classrooms cannot be decorated properly because they depend heavily on the facilities of cultural houses and neighborhoods.

According to Mr. Vo Minh Ky - Deputy Head of the Education Department of Quynh Luu District, the problem of borrowing classrooms must be gradually "resolved" because currently all communes are poor, and there is not much investment from the district and province. Right in Vinh City, the problem of lack of land to build schools in Hong Son and Cua Nam wards has been discussed a lot but has not been resolved yet. The most promising is Thanh Chuong District when the district has 3 options to create resources such as the school consolidation program, the project to universalize 5-year-old preschool and allocate a percentage of land planning money to build schools. However, according to Mr. Nguyen Hoai Nam - Head of the District Education Department, "it will take at least until 2015 to solve the problem of borrowing classrooms because some projects are currently suspended because the district is implementing Resolution 11 of the Government and the price of some items has increased compared to the original estimate".

To resolve the problem of "temporary schools and borrowed classrooms", the Department of Education and Training has also compiled a list of temporary and borrowed classrooms at all levels of education to plan support in the future. The Department of Education and Training will prioritize schools in remote, isolated, and disadvantaged areas first.

Song Hoang