Story of keeping the title of standard school in Nghe An
(Baonghean) - Currently, many standard schools in Nghe An are at risk of losing their standards because they are degraded or have difficulty meeting new criteria.
Overcoming difficulties to build a standard school
From the center of Quy Hop town to Bac Son commune is nearly 30 kilometers, this is also one of the most difficult communes of Quy Hop district because it is located in area 135, 100% of the population is ethnic minorities. The difficulty and hardship also make building a standard school here more difficult than many other localities in the region...
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| Many new classrooms of Bac Son Kindergarten (Quy Hop) were put into use this school year. |
At Chau Son Primary School, according to the plan, the construction of a standard school will be completed in the 2017-2018 school year. Previously, although Nam Son Primary School and Bac Son Primary School had merged into Chau Son Primary School, due to difficulties in investment resources, the plan to build a standard school was still "slow" compared to the set target. It was not until the beginning of this school year that the joy came to the teachers and students of the school after the school had been invested in, fully equipped with functional classrooms to organize teaching and learning for students.
The entire investment cost for repairing and adding items of nearly 1 billion VND was taken from savings, budgets from 2 communes and some priorities for commune 135.
“Although it has been more than 5 years since the merger, our school still maintains two campuses in two communes and quite far apart. Therefore, it is very difficult to invest in both locations at the same time and it will not be possible without determination, unity and consensus.
We also believe that when the school is recognized as a standard and has synchronous investment, the quality of teaching will be better, shortening the regional gap. In particular, this school year, students will study Information Technology in a new, quite modern computer room.
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| Class time of students at Bac Son Kindergarten (Quy Hop). |
Next to Chau Son Primary School, at this time, teachers and students of Bac Son Kindergarten are actively practicing their performances to welcome the new school year. This is also a very meaningful school year when the school has been invested 2.5 billion VND to build new classrooms, remove temporary and degraded classrooms and is submitting documents to be recognized as a standard school.
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| Primary school students in Vinh city. |
Up to this point, although there is still one year left until the end of the term, the target of "70% of schools meeting national standards" set by the 18th Nghe An Provincial Party Congress (term 2015 - 2020) has reached and exceeded the set target.
Currently, the whole province has 1,104 schools meeting national standards, reaching a rate of 72.68%, including 355 kindergartens (71.1%), 468 primary schools (87.6%), 235 secondary schools (58.2%) and 46 high schools (65.7%). Among these, it is encouraging that there are many schools, although located in disadvantaged districts, but the rate is still very high such as Con Cuong 82.97%, Nghia Dan 78.26%, Quy Chau 89.19%, Quy Hop 76.81%...
Skip class, no computer will lose standard
Although the work of building standard schools in the province has achieved remarkable results, many localities are still facing difficulties and have not achieved their set goals. For example, in Ky Son district, at this time the rate of standard schools in the district is only 17.81%, Tuong Duong district 48.28%, Que Phong district 56.26%, Hoang Mai town 65.88%.
“After the separation, the Hoang Mai education sector faced many difficulties because most of the schools were degraded. Therefore, although in the past 5 years, the district has mobilized more than 260 billion VND (accounting for 31% of the district budget), it still has not met the requirements. The whole town still has 112 temporary and borrowed classrooms. Hoang Mai 2 High School is having to rent a location. In fact, although the demand for students (especially preschool children) to go to class has increased rapidly, the facilities have not been able to meet the demand.”
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| Class time of preschool students in Dien Chau district. |
“After 5 years, schools that meet national standards will be reviewed and recognized again. However, in reality, during those 5 years, most of the schools' facilities will deteriorate if they are not regularly renovated. Or, there are many new criteria that need to be supplemented with great difficulty. For example, according to Circular 17, a standard school (primary level) must have a computer room, but the two schools that we are preparing to re-evaluate this school year, Chau Tien Primary School and Chau Hong Primary School, do not have enough funds to supplement them.”
In Dien Chau district, although not yet re-evaluated, some schools have fallen into a state of "losing standards" if considered according to the new criteria. Specifically, according to Circular 17/2018/TT-BGDDT on quality assessment and recognition of national standards for primary schools, primary schools with 30 classes or more will not meet national standards. Meanwhile, many schools in the area have exceeded the scale of 30 classes and if re-evaluated, they will of course not meet the standards.
Or, for preschools, according to regulations, to be recognized as a national standard school at level 2, each school must have no more than 20 groups or classes. However, currently, schools such as Dien Yen, Dien Thinh, Dien Hong, and Dien Ky Kindergartens all exceed the regulations but are not allowed to split schools...
In Vinh city, due to rapid population growth, according to regulations, it is not possible to open more public schools. Therefore, many standard schools still violate criteria such as exceeding the prescribed number of classes, high number of students in each class, and inadequate campus area...
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| Chau Son Primary School's facilities were invested after being recognized as a national standard school. |
“In the current stage, the process of building standard schools needs to be associated with the work of assessing the quality of education. At the same time, this must be considered a breakthrough in management work to improve the quality of education, meeting the increasingly high requirements of the new general education program.”