More comprehensive investment in mountainous education is needed.
(Baonghean.vn) According to statistics, by the end of the 2010-2011 school year, the whole province had 14 ethnic boarding schools, including 1 provincial-level ethnic minority high school, 9 ethnic minority high schools and 4 district-level ethnic minority middle schools with a total of 372 classes and 12,894 students.
In addition to general schools and communal boarding schools, all mountainous districts have established ethnic boarding schools to attract high-achieving ethnic minority junior high school students, creating a source of future cadres for the localities. The development of the school and classroom network in all localities has created favorable conditions for children to go to school. Thanks to that, the intellectual level of the mountainous people in general and ethnic minorities in particular has been gradually raised.
Without a bridge, students in Phia Kham Hai village, Bac Ly commune (Ky Son) have to wade across the river to get to school.
However, the speed of educational development in mountainous areas is still too slow and not uniform. First of all, although the current school network is quite widespread, there are still some places without primary and secondary schools. Meanwhile, all districts have high schools, but the schools are located in the district center, with poor and makeshift accommodation, making it difficult to attract students to study. In addition, due to sparse population and small number of students, many areas have to organize combined classes (the whole province currently has 97 schools, with 347 combined classes, 3,862 students), and this causes many difficulties for teaching and learning.
Quality is also a difficult problem for the education career in mountainous areas. Currently, the rate of children attending kindergarten is very low. This causes them to face many obstacles when entering grade 1, because they do not know Vietnamese. Having to study in combined classes and not knowing Vietnamese, the quality of primary education in mountainous areas does not meet the requirements.
Grade 1 lacks a foundation, so when they go to school, especially in junior high school, many students cannot keep up, leading to boredom and dropping out of school. With the current shortcomings, the first issue that needs attention is the need for stronger investment in facilities. To achieve the above goal, one of the long-term strategic solutions is: It is necessary to invest more budget for mountainous areas, in which priority is given to allocating capital sources, effectively implementing the integration of target programs and investment projects for education development. Because in reality, currently many schools in mountainous areas are still makeshift, some places lack equipment. Actively eliminate "blank communes" in primary and junior high school education, creating conditions for students to go to school because the distance between communes in mountainous areas is still very far.
Mr. Nguyen Phung Dat - Deputy Head of the Department of Mountainous and Ethnic Education - Department of Education and Training, said: In recent years, the education sector has focused on implementing support and treatment policies for teachers and students such as: preferential allowances, responsibility allowances, attraction allowances, first-time allowances for teachers assigned to work in areas with difficult economic conditions. For students, in addition to strictly implementing support policies according to Decision 112 of the Government, the education sector also has a policy of completely exempting tuition fees, subsidizing books and enjoying full preferential regimes such as subsidizing living expenses and monthly rice through social organizations.
In addition to investing in building school facilities, to further enhance the use of ethnic minority languages and scripts in teaching at educational institutions, the sector also organizes training, coaching, professional development, and fostering of Mong language teaching methods for nearly 200 teachers in 3 districts: Ky Son, Tuong Duong, Que Phong; ensuring "one has" (having a convenient place to study), "three enough" (enough food, enough clothes, enough textbooks), "three know" (knowing preferential policies, knowing labor needs for using resources and knowing how to choose a place to study suitable to one's conditions).
To improve the quality of education in mountainous and ethnic minority areas, in addition to investing in school and classroom facilities, the most important issue is still teaching and learning. Innovating teaching methods, strengthening tutoring for weak students, opening classes to teach Vietnamese and ethnic languages; investing funds through programs and projects to help particularly disadvantaged localities develop education, paying attention to teachers' lives, training ethnic minority cadres from ethnic minority schools... are positive solutions considered feasible and suitable for mountainous education.
In addition, it is necessary to have timely policies to encourage and motivate teachers and students of ethnic minorities with excellent achievements. Building a team of teachers with a uniform structure and quality assurance, combined with rotation work so that generations of teachers can work with peace of mind for the cause of education, the cause of "growing people".
Xuan Thong
