Highlight to be the flagship...

(Baonghean) - In the 2010-2015 term, Nghe An education sector has had outstanding achievements at all levels of education and this is also a term with important marks in the work of organizing, rearranging the scale of schools and improving the quality of comprehensive education, gradually narrowing the gap between regions. That result has helped Nghe An education to be the leading flag in the national education system for many consecutive years.

The effectiveness of school mergers

In fact, in the past, the planning of educational development in our province had many limitations, leading to inadequacies in the development process such as the situation of both surplus and shortage of teachers; the situation of local overload in some educational institutions while the scale of some other educational institutions decreased sharply, causing waste in investment; the scale of secondary schools was too small, leading to some teachers not being arranged enough teaching hours, causing waste in labor use, or having to arrange teachers to teach cross-subjects, affecting the quality of teaching. Therefore, re-planning the school network is necessary.

Spacious library of Nghia Dong Secondary School (Tan Ky).

Nam Dan is one of the localities that are determined in planning to merge the school system. Among them, there are schools that are very difficult to implement such as: Hung Thai Nghia Secondary School (from 3 schools of 3 communes Nam Hung, Nam Thai, Nam Nghia), Anh Xuan Secondary School (from 2 schools Nam Anh and Nam Xuan), Phuc Cuong Secondary School (from 2 schools Nam Phuc and Nam Cuong). Talking about the effectiveness of the merger, Mr. Le Van Minh, Principal of Anh Xuan Secondary School shared: If the scale was small as before, Anh Xuan Secondary School would not have had the conditions to complete the construction of a national standard school with spacious facilities, a team of teachers with over 85% of teachers achieving the title of excellent teachers in the district and building the school into one of the first 28 schools in the province to be recognized as a level 3 quality standard school. Before the merger, Nam Xuan School was just a small school with a total of less than 10 classes. The facilities of Nam Anh Secondary School are also degraded, with "few students, few classes, and insufficient management".

Le Xuan Dao Secondary School (Hung Nguyen) has just received the national standard title. The construction of the national standard school title has been focused on investment since the policy of merging Hung Long Secondary School and Hung Linh Secondary School in 2011. Since then, the school has mobilized more than 10 billion VND from school consolidation sources and socialized sources to build the school. Thanks to that, the quality of teaching and learning has been improved. In the 2013-2014 school year, the school had 3 students achieving excellent student results at the provincial level and more than 60 students achieving excellent student results at the district level, including many students achieving first, second, and third prizes. At the end of the year, the school's high school entrance exam results had risen more than 50 places, ranking 5th in the district.

Over the past 5 years, Nghe An has merged more than 100 schools at all three levels, including many localities that have done well such as Yen Thanh, Hung Nguyen, Nam Dan, Quy Chau. With the participation of all levels and sectors, thanks to good propaganda and mobilization work, the school merger has basically received the support of the majority of people. The most obvious effect is that after the merger, the schools have had corresponding teaching staff, creating favorable conditions for professional arrangement, increasing exchanges, observing classes, and visiting classes. Students and teachers have a larger environment to compete in learning... The quality of teaching has changed positively. The work of building facilities has been focused on, the investment is not fragmented but more concentrated, more favorable, calling for many socialized sources from many localities. The number of qualified schools increased by more than 200 schools compared to the beginning of the term, bringing the number of qualified schools in the whole province to 858 schools, accounting for 54.2%, higher than the national average (39.3%).

A turning point in the transformation of preschool types

Before 2011, preschool education always faced many difficulties because the majority of preschools were semi-public (non-public) schools; preschool teachers' salaries depended largely on tuition revenue. Therefore, most teachers were not paid according to the state salary scale and table, and for a long time teachers were not allowed to participate in social insurance. Of the 353 semi-public schools, up to 6,011 managers, teachers and employees received short-term contracts, and teachers were not paid during the 3 summer months. The biggest problem is the income imbalance between teachers on the payroll and non-payroll, between public and semi-public schools.

The quota for managers and teachers is not enough according to the regulations of Circular 71, leading to the labor intensity of preschool teachers being too high, working overtime and not being paid; teachers on maternity leave and sick leave have not been mobilized to teach instead. This not only affects the psychology and life of teachers but also greatly affects the work of caring for and educating children. In addition, the investment and construction of facilities and equipment are not given attention. This leads to a low rate of child mobilization, in early 2010 the rate of mobilization of children under 3 years old to preschool reached 19.8%, children from 3 to 5 years old to class reached 84%. Faced with these difficulties, the conversion of semi-public preschools to public ones aims to meet the aspirations of the majority of teachers and people in the province.

Folk song singing lesson of teacher and students of Kim Lien Kindergarten (Nam Dan).

The conversion of preschool types was officially implemented after the Provincial People's Committee approved the Project to convert semi-public preschool types. After nearly 1 year of preparation, by September 2011, 37 mountainous schools (in Region 2) had been converted to public type, 296 semi-public preschools, Lang Sen Kindergarten (Nam Dan) and Nghi Phu Kindergarten (Vinh City) were converted to public type with partial autonomy in operating costs. Despite the difficulties in budget and funding, with high determination, the province has allocated nearly 300 billion VND per year to recruit nearly 6,000 preschool teachers into the payroll.

Mr. Luu Duc Thuyen - Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training said: This is truly a turning point, a major breakthrough that creates changes in the entire preschool level and helps preschool teachers feel secure in their profession. As for the schools, due to the decentralization of financial management and support for regular spending budgets, they have become autonomous in all activities and more proactive in organizing teaching and learning. Recognizing the true purpose, requirements and benefits of converting semi-public preschools to public ones, in the past 5 years, units and localities have focused resources through many forms of socialization, mobilizing funding sources, working days from the people, businesses, socio-economic organizations and individuals to invest in building facilities, expanding campuses, playgrounds, purchasing equipment, utensils, toys, gradually ensuring essential conditions for caring for, nurturing and educating children.

The organization of boarding schools is given due attention, ensuring conditions such as standard classrooms, adjacent septic tanks, clean water sources, and kitchens that ensure food hygiene and safety. In particular, the results obtained through the conversion of semi-public kindergartens to public kindergartens have great significance in implementing the universalization of preschool education for 5-year-old children, mobilizing children to go to school and creating a solid foundation for other levels of education. At the first 6 months of the 2014-2015 school year, Nghe An had 14/21 district-level units (reaching 66.7%), 423 communes, wards and towns (reaching 88.1%) achieving universal preschool education for 5-year-old children, and 21/21 district-level units achieving universal primary education at the right age level 1 (with 2 units in Cua Lo and Dien Chau achieving level 2).

With these successes, Nghe An education has had a prosperous term. However, in response to the requirement of comprehensive innovation in the spirit of Resolution No. 29 of the Politburo and to complete the targets of the Congress, education work still has many issues that need attention. To do so, it is necessary to continue to strongly innovate teaching and learning methods in a modern direction; diversify teaching and learning methods, shift from mainly learning in the classroom to organizing diverse learning forms, paying attention to social activities, extracurricular activities, and scientific research. Promote the application of information and communication technology in teaching and learning. Synchronously implement solutions to reduce the rate of poor students, overcome the situation of students dropping out of school. Regarding facilities, we will promote the implementation of the goal of solidifying schools and classrooms associated with investment in facilities, in a synchronous and modern direction. Promote the implementation of socialization of education, increase the mobilization of resources to invest in educational development...

My Ha