Nghe An: Finding ways to overcome difficulties in teaching English intensively according to the new Bidding Law

Many specific difficulties

Up to this point, after more than 5 years of implementation, teaching and learning the enhanced English program has become familiar in many schools. In the 2024-2025 school year alone, according to the report of the Department of Education and Training, the whole province has 35 foreign language centers that have been assessed and participated in teaching enhanced English at educational institutions, with 2,574 classes and 67,875 students at all levels from preschool to high school.

To implement enhanced English teaching, in addition to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, the Department of Education and Training issued Official Dispatch No. 2288/SGDĐT-CTTT-GDTX dated September 25, 2023 for schools to select quality affiliated foreign language centers. Specifically, based on actual needs, schools will announce the selection of affiliated foreign language centers and will publicly score to select suitable units. Units participating in the association must have minimum requirements, which are to be assessed by the Department, have full legal documents, capacity records of the teaching staff, and documents proving the center's experience.

However, from January 15, 2025, in accordance with the Law on Bidding 2024 and Resolution No. 22/2024/NQ - People's Council (dated December 6, 2024) regulating the authority to decide on the management and use of public assets, the authority to decide on the purchase of goods and services under the management of Nghe An province, the implementation of enhanced English teaching will have to be carried out through bidding.

These changes are expected to lead to difficulties, because this is unprecedented; meanwhile, teaching and learning enhanced English has its own characteristics. Talking about this, Mr. Tran Dang Thach - Director of Sky line English Center said: Currently, the Enhanced English Program applies a 3-year course for preschool and 4 years for primary and secondary school. However, there will be cases where students only study for 1 year and then stop studying. So when bidding, will we bid for 1 year or 3 years?

Regarding the bidding procedure, recently, the Department of Education and Training held a conference to summarize and deploy tasks for the 2025-2026 school year. Here, representatives of English centers in the province also said that building a bidding document will cost a lot of money and schools and bidding units cannot pay; parents will have to bear this amount, and learning costs will increase. Therefore, according to the centers, it is necessary to build a set of appropriate bidding criteria and anticipate specific difficulties to soon have solutions.

Concerns about disruption to teaching and learning

In the 2025-2026 school year, Hung Binh Secondary School has 2 intensive English classes with a target of 92 students. However, after the announcement of admission, many parents still want their children to study. To enter the intensive English class, students need to have one of the international English certificates such as Mover, Flyer, KET, have a high score on the final exam of grade 5 or have certificates of merit, exchange certificates organized by the Department of Education.

During the implementation process, Ms. Le Thu Yen - Principal of the school, said: Previously, we conducted public scoring so the selection of affiliated units was quite effective and met the requirements. However, if implemented according to the new Bidding Law, I think it will be difficult for the school and entangled in many regulations and procedures.

Sharing the same opinion, teacher Nguyen Thanh Nga - Principal of Hung Dung Secondary School also said: Our school has been implementing the enhanced English program for 7 years with more than 1,000 students participating and has been cooperating with 2 centers, Cleverlearn and Skyline. In the process of cooperating with the centers, there are advantages and difficulties. However, after the school's feedback, the centers have made adjustments to make teaching and learning more suitable. In case of having to switch to bidding, I wonder whether it will be implemented starting from the new course or with all previous courses being studied. In addition, the capacity of schools to evaluate bids is limited, we hope to soon have a guiding document to implement from the summer, to avoid the situation where the school year has already started but the partner unit has not been selected.

Not only English, the bidding will also be carried out for other service packages in the school. Regarding this content, teacher Nguyen Truong Giang - Principal of Le Mao Primary School said: Our school is the first unit to implement the advanced model and currently has many enhanced programs such as English, Information Technology, STEM. If we have to carry out bidding, I think it will be very difficult for the school, because the school does not have enough capacity and funding to implement. Meanwhile, if it continues to be unable to implement, it will disrupt the students' learning.

To answer these questions, at the conference summarizing the school year's tasks, Ms. Vo Thi Thanh Binh - Head of the Department of Finance - Education Investment - Department of Education and Training also said: The difficulties and problems are what we have predicted. However, the Department's viewpoint is to work in accordance with the law, ensuring publicity and transparency between schools - centers - parents and all information is made public on the national bidding network.

Despite anticipating difficulties, Mr. Nguyen Van Khoa - Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training also affirmed that the bidding and public announcement of information on winning bidders will be an opportunity for centers to promote training quality.

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In the coming time, the Department will soon have guiding documents for the bidding process to be implemented smoothly, in which schools will be the investors and will hire consulting units to implement. As for schools, it is necessary to soon build a roadmap, fully count the number of participating students, review the program, fully evaluate the enhanced English teaching work of the centers to build a teaching plan for the coming years.

In addition, the Department will continue to issue documents to improve the effectiveness of organization and management, not to direct intervention in the implementation process. The Department will also assign schools to take the initiative in selecting implementing units, implementing procedures and bidding processes in accordance with prescribed documents.

Mr. Nguyen Van Khoa - Deputy Director of Department of Education and Training