More than 1,400 temporary classrooms in Nghe An 'queue' waiting for project

(Baonghean) - August is the time to "rush" to complete construction projects and renovate schools in preparation for the new school year. However, in many localities, this work still faces many difficulties...

"Common school" no one cares

Hung Chau Commune is located in the central area of ​​the Southeast of Hung Nguyen District. Here, due to the decreasing number of students, since 2006, Hung Nguyen District has decided to merge Hung Chau Secondary School and Hung Nhan Secondary School. In 2009, the school merged with Le Loi Secondary School (a secondary school of Hung Phu and Hung Khanh communes) and changed its name to Lam Thanh Secondary School.

Thanh Lien Primary School (Thanh Chuong) has not received investment despite having a policy. Photo: My Ha

The merger at that time was considered a positive solution to increase the efficiency of investment in facilities. However, in reality, after 8 years, the school's difficulties still remain. Moreover, the school's goal of building a standard school is increasingly distant even though the school has 4 localities responsible for investment.

Sharing about this, teacher Vo Dinh Hoe - Principal of the school said: "Currently, the school has nearly 500 students with 16 classes. However, since the merger, due to the lack of enough classes, the school has had to arrange for students to study in two shifts. The school's functional rooms are also very makeshift, not meeting the teaching requirements. In early 2016, the school received support from the Department of Education and Training to build an additional classroom block from the capital of the "Junior Secondary Education in the Most Difficult Areas, Phase 2" Project of the ADB Bank.

However, the project had just finished building the foundation but had to be temporarily suspended for many months due to lack of capital. Currently, although the new school year has begun, the renovation of the school campus is still very busy." Mr. Le Van Thinh - Chairman of Hung Chau Commune People's Committee said: "Building Lam Thanh Secondary School into a standard school is one of the goals of Hung Chau Commune in the process of completing the construction of a new rural commune in 2018.

In the past, the four communes have discussed many times to invest more than 3 billion VND to build facilities for the school and Hung Chau voluntarily contributed more. However, with the reason that "every commune's budget is difficult, the communes have already invested in secondary schools before", the units have all delayed, causing the construction of the school to be unfinished.

Also in Hung Chau commune, another school that is in a suspended project is the kindergarten. The whole school currently has 8 classrooms, but 5 of them are in a state of disrepair because they were built a long time ago. The remaining 3 classrooms, the school has to temporarily borrow from the village cultural house. Of these, there are 2 so-called classrooms but in fact each room is less than 10m2, divided in half from the hall of the cultural house.

In Thanh Chuong district, the whole district has 65 separate schools, students are having to study temporarily at cultural houses or other units. For example, Thanh Lien Primary School, entering the new school year, although the number of classes has been reduced, the school still has two classes having to study temporarily at the commune's secondary school.

Teacher Dang Phuc Anh - Principal of the school also said: "Because the commune's area is too large, and the school is not located in the central area, for many years now the commune government has planned to move the school to a new location, located in the commune center. However, due to many difficulties in capital, after leveling the ground, the implementation of new construction is still difficult because the commune's funding source and social mobilization source are very low".

Mr. Dang Van Hoa - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Thanh Chuong district also said: "At the end of the 2016 - 2017 school year, the rate of national standard schools in the whole district was 62.8% with 81 schools. Although there have been many efforts, this number is still about 4% lower than the general level of the province and to achieve the target set by the District Party Congress of 70%, the work of building standard schools in the district still faces many difficulties.

Currently, most of the district's newly built schools are funded by the province and support through socialized education. In reality, the mobilization from the local budget is very little because of the characteristics of Thanh Chuong district, which is a large area and has many disadvantaged schools. However, not all projects are implemented smoothly. Currently, at least 2 projects have been approved but cannot be implemented due to lack of capital, which are the construction of Thanh Lien Secondary School and Nho Hoa Secondary School.

Makeshift classroom in the hamlet cultural house of Hung Chau Kindergarten (Hung Nguyen). Photo: My Ha

Queue up for support

According to statistics, the whole province currently has 1,403 temporary and borrowed classrooms (of which, 748 are preschool classrooms, 548 are primary, 86 are secondary, and 21 are high schools). Through the survey, there are at least 120 schools in special difficulty that need to be built. Although the demand is very large, currently, according to Mr. Nguyen Mau Luong - Director of the Management Board of Specialized Projects in Education and Training, the medium-term public investment fund allocated to the education sector for the period 2016 - 2020 is very little at 131 billion VND. With this small capital, in the next three years, the number of schools invested in construction and repair can be counted on the fingers.

In that context, calling for socialization and the participation of local authorities is extremely important. On the part of the province and the education sector, at this time, projects will continue to be implemented mainly focusing on disadvantaged schools. Specifically, the completion of facilities for Ky Son, Que Phong, Quy Hop, Quy Chau Boarding Schools for Ethnic Minorities and Nghe An High School No. 2 Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities will be accelerated from the capital of the National Target Program.

In addition, in the 2017-2020 period, Nghe An will receive 254 billion VND from the Central Government's government bonds to build classrooms for 86 kindergartens and primary schools in extremely disadvantaged communes. The sector is also actively completing procedures to restart the project to support the construction of schools in extremely disadvantaged areas to soon end the situation of suspended projects...

My Ha