Vinh City Preschool Education System: Paradox Between Public and Non-Public

(Baonghean) - As the political, cultural and educational center of the whole province, but currently in Vinh City, the preschool education system only meets about 80% of the needs of preschool-age children and nearly 20% of the needs of nursery-age children in the area. This leads to many paradoxes such as: shortage and overload in public preschools; "running" for schools during the enrollment season and the city is still unable to complete universal preschool education for 5-year-old children...

Le Loi Ward is one of the central wards of Vinh City, with about 16,000 residents. The population is large, combined with a large and long area, but since 2005, the ward has not had a kindergarten. This has caused frustration among the people, because on average each year, the ward has about 600 children of nursery and kindergarten age who have to go to class. Because there are no schools, students do not know where to study. The city has also "specially" allowed preschool students in the ward to apply to study in other wards, but because all wards and communes are overloaded, each year only about 100 children apply to study in neighboring schools. The rest, some have to stay at home, some go to private nurseries and private child care groups. In the ward, since 2008, a non-public kindergarten, Blue Sky School, has been established. However, this is a school that follows the international school model, with tuition fees 20 times higher than public kindergartens. According to Mr. Thai Giap Vinh - Chairman of the Ward People's Committee, due to the high tuition fees, the first year the whole ward only had 2 children attending this school, the second year there were 3 children and now only about 10 children can afford to pay tuition fees. The lack of a kindergarten leads to many consequences, especially for families with difficult economic conditions, who cannot afford to send their children to private schools, or cannot afford to pick them up and drop them off. The ward is also forced to maintain childcare centers as independent groups of classes to have a place for children to study, even though these are all spontaneous groups and do not meet basic conditions for childcare.

Class time at Sao Mai Kindergarten (Quan Bau ward - Vinh city).

Vinh City currently has 51 kindergartens, including 29 public schools (including one provincial public school) and 23 non-public schools. Although the number of schools is large, the scale of investment and infrastructure systems of the schools are uneven. In the public school system, the city currently has Le Loi ward and Hung Phuc ward that have not yet built schools. The remaining schools, because they have been built for too long, have small school and class sizes, so the facilities have degraded, and the school and class sizes do not meet industry standards. The city still has 4 schools that have not been recognized as national standard schools, although they are located in the center, namely Hong Son Kindergarten, Le Mao Kindergarten, Cua Nam Kindergarten and Nghi Duc Kindergarten. Cua Nam Kindergarten, in particular, still has to rent additional locations due to lack of classrooms.

There is no outdoor playground, this narrow space is the play corner of Son Ca kindergarten.

Statistics also show that, with about 30,000 children of universal education age, to meet the requirements to ensure that children from 6 months old and up can attend school, the city is in need of hundreds of classrooms. However, due to inadequate material conditions, the city only dares to set a target of 30% of children of nursery school age and 90% of children of kindergarten age to attend school. The construction of more schools and classes in the public preschool system is almost at a standstill, due to lack of land and construction funds, while the local budget for education each year is only enough for minor repairs and the construction of a number of new classrooms. In addition, the public preschool system also has other shortcomings, for example, Hung Loc Kindergarten and Nghi Phu Kindergarten have exceeded the regulations in scale and need to be separated, but due to the mechanism, this cannot be done. The city is still short of about 50 teachers, so, according to the regulation, there must be an average of 1.8 teachers/class, but now all schools are using teachers at a ratio of 1.5 teachers/class, making it difficult to ensure teaching conditions.

Lack of kindergartens, so overload is understandable in public kindergartens. Truong Thi Kindergarten this year has an enrollment target of 565 children, while there are 712 children in the area who need to go to class (an increase of 78 children compared to the previous school year). Although this school year the school has received investment from the City People's Committee to build 5 new classrooms, the enrollment pressure is still very high and the situation of 4th and 5th grade classes having about 40 children per class is common (exceeding the industry's regulations of 5-10 children). Meanwhile, the school has only 25 teachers, with a ratio of 1.5 teachers/class. At Sao Mai Kindergarten, although located far from the city center, the demand for preschool and kindergarten children to go to class is also very high. This school year, the enrollment target of the school is 85 children (born in 2012, 2011), but the number of application files is up to 155 sets. In Quang Trung ward, although there are 4 schools, in order to ensure good reception of children, the schools cannot avoid having to accept an increase in the number of students per class, because the demand for children to attend class is very high. Specifically, Quang Trung 1 Kindergarten, 2-year-old class: 32 children/class, 3-year-old class: 48 children/class; 4.5-year-old class: 38-40 children/class. As for Hoa Hong Kindergarten, the average is over 38 children/class. In Hung Binh ward, although there is no longer a situation of having to queue from 3 or 4 o'clock at night like a few years ago, the enrollment pressure of Hung Binh Kindergarten is still very high. Because the ward has more than 140 applications for kindergarten and nursery classes (an increase of 20 applications compared to the previous school year), while the school is only allowed to enroll 50 children according to the plan. To ensure fairness for families, the school has to accept enrollment by lottery, with the supervision of local authorities.

In order to reduce the burden on the public school system, recently in Vinh City, the non-public kindergarten system has also developed quite rapidly with 23 schools. However, the effectiveness has not been as expected. Because the schools that were established early, with experienced teachers, are often small in scale, have narrow campus areas, lack functional rooms, or lack play space for children and are all developed from groups of children. Hoa Thuy Tien Kindergarten (Ha Huy Tap Ward) is an example. As one of the first private schools in the city, established more than 10 years ago, the facilities are still limited. The school has a campus of only about 600 m2; built into 3 floors, divided into 4 classrooms. “To meet the criteria of a new non-public kindergarten, the school has renovated the kitchen, tiled the walls of all classrooms, functional rooms, and music rooms. However, because the school rents a house right on the street, there is no outdoor playground; the area for the playground for children only takes advantage of a small space on the first floor” – Ms. Ngo Thi Cam Tam – Principal of Hoa Thuy Tien Kindergarten said. This is also the common situation of other kindergartens such as: Son Ca Kindergarten, Duong Bo, May Ngoc, Huong Duong…

As for the non-public kindergartens that came later (according to the standards prescribed by Decision 41/2008/Ministry of Education and Training), most of them have been invested in on a large scale and have guaranteed facilities such as Sunrise Kindergarten, Hung Phuc, Tuoi Tho. However, in these schools, attracting children is still difficult, many parents are still concerned about the quality of teachers, the quality of child care, as well as tuition fees... The city currently has about 65 independent kindergartens. These are mostly spontaneous classes, the babysitters are not professional, the classrooms often have very poor facilities, lack of space, small classrooms, no garden, unclean toilets, not up to standards, not ensuring safety. In particular, in some independent kindergartens, there are 5-year-old children, but they have not enjoyed the conditions for learning, care, and education according to the project to universalize 5-year-old children. Even licensed nursery groups still do not comply with legal regulations such as: no nameplate of nursery group or kindergarten class, address, phone number, decision number... The quality of teachers is not high, mainly young teachers without experience in nurturing, caring for, and educating children, in some places teachers do not meet the standards. Some school and group owners do not have certificates of preschool teacher training or management according to regulations. Also because of the above limitations, in reality, non-public schools account for 23/51 nursery schools in the whole city, but in the 2014-2015 school year, these schools only attracted about 4,000 children out of 18,000 children attending classes in the area and have not developed firmly, mainly attracting children under 4 years old.

According to Ms. Le Thi Phuong, Deputy Head of the City Department of Education and Training, the reason for the overload of public preschools is that the demand for children to attend classes is very high, but the number of children in the universal education program is too large, so priority is given to classrooms for 5-year-old children. In addition, although private schools have developed quite a lot, due to high tuition fees and lower quality than public schools, the majority of people still prefer public schools to non-public schools... This is also a difficulty for the city's education sector, because in current conditions, expanding the scale of schools and classes for the public preschool system is almost impossible. But how to attract children in the private school system is not an easy task when there are still too many shortcomings... Also because of this vicious circle, although the city is "famous" for having 51 kindergartens, it is still unknown when it will be able to universalize preschool education for 5-year-old children, while according to the project, it must be completed by the end of 2015. As for students under 4 years old, the situation of lobbying, queuing, and drawing lots will certainly continue, when the city has not solved the problem of lack of classrooms, lack of teachers and lack of priority mechanisms for the non-public kindergarten system to remove difficulties in tuition fees and quality of child care...

(To be continued)

Article and photos:Dinh Nguyet - My Ha