Students are confused and schools have difficulty implementing the new general education program combination.
(Baonghean.vn) - This school year is the second year that the new general education program has been implemented for 10th graders. However, there are still difficulties in registering for groups for students, for parents, students and the school.
Confused about registering a group
With 25 points, Vo Phuong Mai - a former student of Nghi Huong Secondary School was admitted to Cua Lo High School in this year's 10th grade entrance exam. Her admission score was quite high, and her scores in the three subjects of Math, Literature and English were quite even, but when registering for the subject combinations to prepare for the three years of high school, she still had some concerns.
Sharing about this, Vo Phuong Mai said: This year, the school allows students to choose 1 of 4 groups, including 2 classes oriented to block A Math - Physics - Chemistry, 2 classes oriented to block A1 Math - Physics - English and 6 classes oriented to block D which are Math - Literature - English. For now, I will register for block D but I don't know if this choice is correct. Moreover, although I choose block D, in this class there are 3 groups with different subjects. I am confused about choosing electives, not knowing whether to register for electives Physics or Chemistry, Economic and Legal Education or Technology.
These doubts are not only of Vo Phuong Mai students. Many parents, on the first day of registering their children for admission, had to go directly to the school to ask for advice from teachers.
As a teacher with many years of experience in the classroom and now as a parent, Ms. Phung Thi Hieu, whose child is enrolled at Cua Lo High School, said: I think the school's orientation and combination of elective subjects are quite clear. But what I am concerned about now is that I do not know how the Ministry of Education and Training will organize the graduation exam and university admission in 3 years when my children complete the high school program. I see that currently, the trend is that schools are organizing their own exams with competency assessment tests, including a synthesis of 6-7 cultural subjects, including natural subjects and social subjects. If now children only register based on their feelings, they will have difficulty registering for exams and university admission in the future. Not to mention, I do not know if universities willadmissionShould we continue following the traditional blocks A, B, C, D as they are now? This is also very difficult for high schools to answer.
At Le Viet Thuat High School, despite reading the school's instructions very carefully, Mr. Nguyen Dang Can - father of student Nguyen Thanh Binh - still cannot choose subjects for his son.
Mr. Binh said: I see that the new program has advantages such as students will study fewer subjects and can choose according to their talents, interests as well as career orientation and children can choose subjects and learning content.
At Le Viet Thuat High School, in addition to compulsory subjects, students can choose 4 subjects from 3 groups of subjects, including social sciences, natural sciences, and technology and arts, and these subjects may be related to their children's university entrance exams in the future. With their age, it will be very difficult to choose, because if they gain one subject, they will lose another, while they do not have a clear orientation about their future career and the Ministry has not yet given specific instructions. My child himself scored 27.1 points but did not take the specialized exam, which means he does not have a clear idea about the career and subjects he intends to study. Therefore, we have to consider carefully.
Difficulty in staffing and curriculum development
At this time, some schools in the province such as Le Hong Phong High School and Dien Chau 3 High School have organized career counseling sessions or posted many articles on the school's fanpage to help students better understand the choice of subjects and the relationship between future careers.
The 2018 General Education Program is designed according to career orientation through the selection of subject combinations. Therefore, the selection of subjects when entering grade 10 needs to be carefully considered by parents and students, in order to choose the right subject combination for themselves, promote their inherent talents and meet their future career prospects.
At Le Viet Thuat High School, the school has completed the enrollment for grade 10 and it is expected that in the first week of August, the school will organize a meeting with parents and grade 10 students to guide them on registering for subjects for first-grade students. This special activity has only taken place in the past 2 years when the school started implementing the new 2018 General Education program with many important changes. Particularly for grade 10 students, the choice from the first year of school not only affects the 3 years of study at school but also greatly affects the choice of future career.
In fact, since the previous school year, despite having had quite thorough consultation, after only 1 semester of study, the Board of Directors of Le Viet Thuat High School received quite a lot of applications for class and block transfer from students. While students who have chosen a subject combination from the beginning of grade 10 to semester II or to grade 11, 12 and want to change the combination will face many difficulties, because they have to re-study from the beginning the subjects of the new combination to meet the requirements before being transferred. On the school side, there are many difficulties when having to arrange teachers to teach make-up lessons and organize assessments for students.
Talking about this, teacher Hoang Minh Luong - Principal of the school said: Based on the guidance documents of the ministry, the industry and the 2018 General Education Program, the school has built subject combinations that ensure the requirements of the program, according to the team of teachers and the school's facilities. Before students officially register, the school also publicly posted the combinations that the school plans to implement so that students can learn and see more clearly the nature of the program. Students will register for combinations after fully understanding and on that basis, the school will begin to arrange classes according to their wishes. The school's point of view is to create maximum convenience for students but also needs to be based on actual conditions and it is difficult to meet all needs. Personally, I think that the new program has advantages but also leaves difficulties for educational institutions, creating local teacher surplus and shortage in schools.
Nowadays, the trend of parents and students often choose social subjects, leading to a shortage of social subject teachers and a surplus of natural subject teachers. Or the current curriculum between schools is different. Therefore, when students transfer schools or request to change classes, they will have gaps in subjects and have to take make-up classes, which is very time-consuming.
At Cua Lo High School, this year, the school only arranges students according to the A, B, D block groups and does not have a block group according to the C block orientation. This is based on the school's reality and the wishes of the students' parents.
The new program has many new subjects on experience, art, music, but currently schools have not been able to implement them because there are no teachers to teach the gifted subjects. Meanwhile, the experience subjects are using part-time teachers such as homeroom teachers or there is a shortage of teachers so the quality is not high. In fact, the arrangement of subjects is currently being implemented to have enough labor force for the school.
Regarding the implementation of the new program for 10th grade students, recently at the conference summarizing the high school year organized by the Ministry of Education and Training in Nghe An, many opinions were also raised about the shortcomings in choosing elective subjects, study topics in the first year for 10th graders and the story of teacher shortage.
To help schools overcome difficulties in the implementation process, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son also noted that schools need to provide maximum support to learners and not set any barriers for high school students when transferring schools and blocks. In case students have a subject gap and need to supplement their knowledge, schools need to create conditions to arrange time and teachers to organize teaching and testing and assessment for students in accordance with the guidelines./.