Teaching 2 sessions/day: Increasing sessions but increasing quantity and quality?
Teaching two sessions a day will be implemented from the 2025-2026 school year. Following the guidance, some schools in Nghe An have made adjustments by reducing the number of periods and increasing the number of classes per week.
Many schools were closed on Saturday.
Since the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, the timetable of Hien Son Secondary School, Bach Ha Commune has been adjusted. Accordingly, instead of studying 6 mornings a week like the previous school year, this year students only study from Monday to Friday and have a day off on Saturday. However, they study 3 more afternoons with each session lasting from 2-3 periods.
After implementing 2 sessions/day teaching, the school's timetable has been adjusted to reduce the number of periods but increase the number of classes in both the morning and afternoon.
To do this, the school must be flexible in its arrangements to accommodate the actual teaching staff. Because the school has only 2 teachers in the local area, the rest are far away, some are nearly 20 kilometers from the school, so traveling will be difficult.
Mr. Nguyen Van Dan - Principal of Hien Son Secondary School
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Across the province, the timetables of many schools have also been changed from this school year and all schools have implemented Saturdays as a break. At Anh Son 1 High School, in addition to morning classes, the school arranges 3 more afternoon sessions each week for students to study regular subjects. Students at Huynh Thuc Khang High School, Truong Vinh Ward, also no longer study on Saturdays. However, in addition to one regular class session at school, the remaining 2 sessions students study 2-3 extra periods.
In Con Cuong commune, schools such as Chi Khe Secondary School, Tra Lan Secondary School, Chau Cam Secondary School for Ethnic Minorities or Con Cuong High School have extra classes 3-4 afternoons per week.
Having Saturday off is convenient for teachers and students, giving each person more time to rest and participate in other activities.
On the school side, when changing the timetable, adjustments must be made so that teachers do not have to teach too many periods in a day, balancing subjects to avoid stress for students.
Mr. Nguyen Anh Dung - Principal of Anh Son 1 High School
The implementation is still mechanical.
From the 2025-2026 school year, the education sector will implement 2 sessions/day for general education, with a clear distinction between session 1 and session 2 to ensure scientific, flexible and comprehensive development of students.
Session 1 is the time to implement the official general education program with compulsory teaching content. Session 2 is the time to organize supplementary educational activities, develop capacity, nurture excellent students, and tutor students who have not achieved. In addition, schools can implement life skills education activities, financial education, art education, physical education, STEM/STEAM, career guidance, artificial intelligence, foreign languages, etc. according to the orientation of comprehensive development suitable for students' psychology at each level of education.
Related toteach 2 sessions/day,According to the instructions, the organization of session 1 and session 2 can be flexible in terms of time, balanced in terms of duration, not fixed in the morning as session 1 and the afternoon as session 2. However, after 3 weeks of implementation in schools in Nghe An province, it shows that the number of schools organizing session 2 according to the instructions is not much. Instead, the implementation is in the form of "stretching" the timetable and transferring the content of the compulsory program from the morning to the afternoon extra classes.
One of the main reasons is that there are not enough conditions to implement. Mr. Nguyen Van Dan - Principal of Hien Son Secondary School added: In addition to teaching the main curriculum, we have built a number of educational activities outside of class hours but not regularly because the school does not have the conditions to implement. Inviting teams such as artisans, athletes... is also not possible because it is beyond the school's potential.
Many principals also admitted that the content for the second session of the day, if implemented at this time, is limited to training excellent students and reviewing for final year students. Some schools in favorable areas have additional classes (for a fee). Organizing other activities is difficult to implement regularly due to lack of teachers and resources.
At Muong Qua High School, Mon Son Commune, Mr. Hoang Nhu Lam - Principal of the school said that currently, in addition to the morning session, classes will study 3 more afternoon sessions, including 1 session for after-school activities with contents such as English club activities, implementing some extracurricular programs to create excitement for students. On the teachers' side, because many subjects of the school are only taught by 1 teacher, the afternoon sessions will be difficult to implement uniformly between classes but must be extended throughout the week according to different blocks. Therefore, for teachers living far away, the scene of staying at school to teach the second session and bringing "rice balls, rice bags" is normal.
The change will also impact students and families, especially middle school students who have to pick up and drop off their children every day.
My child just started 10th grade. In addition to afternoon classes, they have 2 sessions at school in the morning. But some sessions have the first 3 periods, some sessions have the last 2 periods, so it affects their study plan and travel.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong has a child studying at a public high school in Truong Vinh ward.
According to the new guidelines of the Ministry of Education and Training, although only two sessions per day have been implemented, there have been comments from parents, students and teachers at educational institutions. Many parents said that after switching from one session to two sessions, family life was disrupted when the pick-up and drop-off time had to be increased from two to four times a day. Moreover, the afternoon class time is only 2-3 periods, forcing parents to pick up their children early, affecting their work time. For students who live far from school, having to travel constantly also affects their health, rest time and study plan.
Reality also shows that if following the "rigid" regulations as the Ministry's current guidelines, there are still shortcomings. In particular, the Ministry's regulation of the maximum number of study periods to only 7 periods/day for all 3 levels (primary, secondary, high school) makes it difficult for schools to arrange study periods and are forced to spread them out into many different sessions.
In addition, due to the lack of teachers, in many schools, teachers have taught more than the prescribed number of hours. Meanwhile, schools do not have the budget to pay. In this case, inviting artists and artisans to teach in the form of socialization will increase the financial burden on parents and go against the spirit of Circular 29.
Many people also questioned that, according to the policy of the Ministry of Education and Training, the implementation of the second session is based on the needs and wishes to develop the talents of each student. Therefore, during the implementation process, schools should put the second session in the right place, avoiding a simultaneous but "mechanical" implementation that does not ensure the true nature and puts more pressure on students, teachers and parents.