'Achievement disease' in standard school assessment?

(Baonghean) - Compared to the whole country, Nghe An is considered to have a fairly high number of standard schools with over 900 recognized schools. However, due to pressure on student numbers, lack of investment in facilities and the "disease" of achievements, the quality of standard schools has not met expectations.

Chief standard without grid power

Chau Phong Commune (Quy Chau) has 2 primary schools that were recognized as national standard schools since the 2009-2010 school year, however, for the past 6 years, both of these schools have not had electricity. Many subjects require the use of computers, printers, screens, projectors... but without electricity, these devices are rarely used. The learning conditions of students are also not guaranteed, especially during the rainy season, when the sky in the mountains gets dark quickly but the light is not enough. Or fans are quite a "luxury" for teachers and students of the school when the cost of buying gasoline to run the generator has reached tens of millions of VND per year.

3-year-old students of Hung Dao Kindergarten (Hung Nguyen) are having to temporarily study. in the music room

Ms. Ngo Thi Dung - Principal of Chau Phong 1 Primary School shared: “The lack of electricity causes many difficulties for the school in management and teaching. For example, the exchange of documents is mainly via email, but the school has no electricity or internet, so teachers often have to go home to receive them. The school encourages teachers to use electronic lesson plans in teaching, but every time they want to use them, they have to use a generator, which is both noisy and very expensive.”

In general, according to the criteria for recognizing a standard school, one of the minimum requirements that must be met is facilities and teaching staff. However, in reality, this is very difficult to achieve, especially in kindergartens.

At Hung Dao Kindergarten (Hung Nguyen district), since 2010, the school has been recognized as a national standard school. After 6 years of standardization, efficiency has increased significantly, especially in mobilizing children to go to school, but along with that, many shortcomings have arisen.

This school year, the school has 442 children, divided into 13 groups of classes. Currently, the school only has 12 classrooms, so a class for 3-year-olds has to temporarily use the music room. The school also does not have enough teachers, with an average ratio of 1.3 teachers per class, and many classes exceed the prescribed number of students.

"Achievement disease" in appraisal?

According to statistics from the Department of Education and Training, by the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, the whole province had 956 schools meeting national standards (reaching a rate of 62.93%). This figure is higher than the national average (43.93%) and higher than provinces in the North Central region such as Thanh Hoa, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue, etc.

Nguyen Truong To Primary School was built in 1996 and has not been renovated for 20 years.

However, the work of building and recognizing standard schools is currently facing many shortcomings and difficulties, many schools are in a state of "falling" standards. The main reason is that the schools have been built for a long time, so the facilities are degraded and damaged. Many schools, due to the increase in the size of the school, lack classrooms and the number of students in the class is too large. The shortage of teachers still occurs a lot, especially in preschools.

Faced with this reality, in the 2015-2016 school year, the Department of Education and Training re-evaluated standard schools that had been recognized for 5 years. As a result, many schools had their standard school titles revoked. For example, at the primary level, out of 341 evaluated schools, 13 schools were not re-recognized.

According to Mr. Tran The Son - Head of Primary School Department, Department of Education and Training: It is true that standard schools "fail" to meet standards, and the department's viewpoint is to seriously review to build a system of standard schools that ensure quality and meet criteria.

However, due to limited human resources and the large number of schools that need to be re-evaluated, it is inevitable that there will be inadequate supervision. As of now, although there are more than 300 schools that have been re-evaluated, in reality, the inspection by the Department of Education and Training only reaches 15-20%. The rest are only recognized through the school's self-assessment report and inspection by the Department of Education and Training. The process of learning about the assessment work shows that there are cases of re-recognition that are not convincing.

For example, Nguyen Truong To Primary School (Hung Trung Commune - Hung Nguyen) was recognized as a standard school in 2003. After 13 years, the facilities have seriously degraded, the classrooms and desks are lacking and not guaranteed. The current school has enough classrooms on paper, but in reality, the main campus only has 10 classrooms; the remaining 12 classrooms are being taught at the second campus in poor, degraded conditions and not ensuring the minimum classroom regulations.

Inside a classroom at Nguyen Truong To Primary School (Hung Nguyen) - a national standard school.

Due to inadequate facilities, students in classes have to study one session at the main school and one session at the satellite school, making it difficult and inconvenient to travel, affecting the quality of teaching and learning. Teacher Luu Quang Dong - Principal of the school also admitted: If according to the criteria of the standard, the school does not meet the standards. The school itself is not satisfied even though it has been recognized as a standard school. For preschools, if considered according to the criteria of teachers and overload, perhaps no school in the whole province meets the standards.

From the above shortcomings, it is required that in the coming time, the assessment of standard schools needs to be more thorough, accurate and objective; it is necessary to eliminate "achievement disease", "criteria debt" and "looseness" in assessment. On the part of schools and localities, should they not pay too much attention to indicators and quantity but should consider this as an opportunity to review the difficulties and shortcomings in order to continue to strengthen investment, upgrade facilities, build staff and rectify enrollment work to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

My Ha