Highland students drop out of school: Part 1 - Alarming situation
(Baonghean) - Public opinion is "heated" by the news that hundreds of secondary school students in the mountainous districts of Con Cuong and Tuong Duong have dropped out of school. This is truly alarming for the education sector. This situation is not only happening this year but has been happening for many years.
"Hot" in Con Cuong
From Con Cuong Town, following the asphalt road through the buffer zone communes of Pu Mat National Forest, we arrived at Luc Da Commune, the locality with the highest number of students dropping out of school and at risk of dropping out of school in the district. At the Commune People's Committee, Mr. Lo Van Nhung - Chairman of the Commune People's Committee, along with Vice Principal of Luc Da Secondary School, teacher Cao Chi Thanh, said: After the Lunar New Year holiday, the number of students dropping out of school is very high. Up to now, 26 students from grades 6 to 9 have dropped out of school and are at risk of dropping out.
Faced with this situation, the local government and the school have tried every way to persuade the children to continue going to school. However, for various reasons, 6 children have dropped out of school and gone to the South to work, including: Luong Thi Trang (class 9A1), La Van Duan (class 7A1), Luong Thi Giang (class 8A1), Quang Van Truong (class 8A3), Ha Van Ngoc (class 9A2) and Vi Van Trung (class 9A3). The school, in coordination with local government and political organizations, continues to persuade families to send their children to school. Of these 20 children, 8 have returned to class, while the remaining 12 are dropping out of school at home.
Classroom at Bao Commune Secondary School
According to the school's statistics, children from 3 villages: Ban Moi, Ban Luc Son and Hua Na have dropped out of school the most, of which, Ban Moi has the most, with 6 children dropping out of school. We met with the Party Secretary of Ban Moi - Mr. Loc Phuong and the Village Chief - Mr. Loc Van Thin, who said that because the village is far from the school, the family is poor and because of competition, many children in the village have dropped out of school in recent years. The teachers work very hard, regardless of the sun, rain, wind and cold, they still come to the village to help us encourage the children to go to school, but the children still refuse to go to school. There are many families with 2 children who dropped out of school halfway, it's so sad. In the past, the road was ten thousand times more difficult, the learning conditions were also lacking, there was no electricity... but we still went to school until we finished secondary school. But today, the road from the village to school is much more convenient, there is electricity, the school is well-built... especially when going to school, the State also supports the children with food and accommodation, but the children still drop out of school. The main reason is that the family does not care and the children themselves lack determination, only wanting to earn money to buy personal items. Some parents say: "He will not be able to do anything after finishing secondary school, so let him drop out and go to work to earn money."
Mr. Phan Anh Tai - Head of the Education Department of Con Cuong district said that the situation of primary and secondary school students in the district dropping out of school has been happening for many years. In the 2009-2010 school year, 118 students dropped out, mostly secondary school students. Entering the 2010-2011 school year, the department directed schools to actively monitor and mobilize students at risk of dropping out to return to school, so in the 2010-2011 school year, the number of students dropping out of school decreased to 54. In the 2011-2012 school year, as of March 8, 63 students had dropped out of school, and the number of students at risk of dropping out was 46. If the mobilization work is not good, this school year there could be more than 100 secondary school students in Con Cuong district dropping out of school. The Department has issued an official dispatch directing schools to arrange teachers to go directly to each family to encourage students to go to school and ensure the number of students. This is a very heavy task, otherwise it will be impossible to maintain universal lower secondary education.
Flooding in Xiangyang
In the story, a young teacher from the highlands who is teaching at Yen Thang Secondary School (Tuong Duong) said that since Tet, many students have not returned to class. When they visited their homes, the parents said that their children were working far away. This highland teacher added that the phenomenon of students dropping out of school is quite common at Nga My Secondary School (a shared secondary school of Nga My and Xieng My communes).
To find out about this issue, we traveled over 200 km up the mountain to Nga My Secondary School. Principal Tran Nhat Giang said: In the 2010-2011 school year, the whole school had 42 students who dropped out. After many campaigns, only 2 students returned to class. This year, after Tet, 12 students of the school did not come to class anymore. Mr. Giang said, for many different reasons, students competed to drop out of school to stay home to help their parents, some went to find jobs at businesses in the
Recently, in Vang Mon village of the O Du ethnic group, two junior high school students dropped out of school. Village chief Luong Dinh Thai said: Just after Tet, a girl named Lo Thi Nhan dropped out of school and followed her mother to leave the village, supposedly to China. Her mother had been there for two years and came back to pick up her daughter. For students here, once they hear that somewhere has a comfortable life, a job with a regular income, or friends invite them to leave, they are ready to drop out of school and leave their homeland.
Lo Thi Thuy followed her parents from Pot village to Vang Mon village in 2008. The government built a house for her family to settle down under the Ban Ve Hydropower Project. In 2011, the family's life became difficult, so Thuy "volunteered" to drop out of school while in 7th grade to give her 3 younger siblings the opportunity to go to school. The family lived on an unstable farm, with good harvests and bad harvests, so they had to accept letting their daughter, who was not yet 14 years old, drop out of school to work.
At the beginning of the year of the Dragon, at Luu Kien Secondary School (Tuong Duong), there were 15 students who dropped out of school. The majority of these students were from Xoong Con village (5 students). Mr. Dinh Xuan Hong - Principal of Luu Kien Secondary School said that after the Tet holiday, many students left the village. When teachers tried to persuade them to return to class, the parents only promised to find a way to contact and call on their children to return to class. However, after more than a month, only 1 student agreed to return to take supplementary cultural classes.
Talking with Mr. Ho Duy Thinh - Deputy Head of Tuong Duong Education Department, it is known that up to this point, the department has not been able to accurately count the number of students who have officially dropped out of school. The reason is that the number of students who have dropped out and then returned to class changes continuously.
According to the report of the Department of Education and Training, the number of students who dropped out of school from the beginning of the school year to February 1, 2012 was 871, including 17 primary school students, 446 secondary school students (an increase of 30 students compared to the beginning of the school year) and 408 high school students (an increase of 60 students compared to the beginning of the school year). Of which, most of the students who dropped out of school at the secondary and high school levels were in mountainous areas. |
X. Hoang - Huu Vi
