“Look in the mirror, adjust yourself”

(Baonghean) - Based on Circular 42 of the Ministry of Education and Training promulgating the Regulations on standards for assessing educational quality and procedures and cycles for assessing educational quality of general education institutions and continuing education institutions, which officially took effect from January 6, 2013, in the 2012-2013 school year, the Thanh Chuong Department of Education and Training has selected 6 schools at 3 levels to conduct educational quality assessment (QA), including: Town Kindergarten, Thanh Linh Kindergarten; Town Primary School, Thanh Lam Primary School; Cat Van Secondary School, Thanh Linh Secondary School. Up to now, after nearly a semester of implementation, units and schools in the area have completed the synthesis of self-assessment results and appraisal of self-assessment results with the aim of finding strengths, limitations, and shortcomings to find solutions to improve educational quality.

Thanh Lam Primary School is located in a difficult area: high poverty rate (the whole school has 135 children from poor households (accounting for 35%), there are up to 3 schools, the satellite school is 4km away from the main school, the facilities are still limited, so it is difficult to improve the quality of education. Mr. Le Xuan Minh, the school's principal, said: "The school has encountered many difficulties in the work of assessing the quality of education. According to the school's self-assessment, the school has only achieved 19/28 criteria, equivalent to level 1 (the highest level is level 3). Among the criteria stipulated in Circular 42, the most difficult is the facilities, because it is a school in a difficult area, and has many satellite schools, it is very difficult to invest in building auxiliary works to serve teaching and learning activities... However, from that self-assessment, we can see our strengths and weaknesses, from which we can have plans and strategies to improve the quality of education".

Class 9A students' lesson, Cat Van Secondary School.

As for Cat Van Secondary School (Thanh Chuong), since the 2010-2011 school year, implementing Directive 23 of the Provincial People's Committee on quality assessment, the school has established a self-assessment council, prepared documents and wrote reports assessing groups of criteria, developed an assessment process, specified specific evidence, assessed weaknesses and proposed solutions to overcome them. Mr. Nguyen Nhat Viet - Principal of Cat Van Secondary School said: "In the 2012-2013 school year, the school has equipped an additional IT room, completed the subject room for presentations and projectors; added more books, newspapers, teaching equipment; built a playground, a practice ground for physical education for students... Most notably, thanks to the quality assessment work, mass organizations, local authorities, and parents are more interested in improving the quality of teaching and learning at the school". After applying the criteria for quality education, the school has created conditions for teachers to study and improve their qualifications. Up to now, 100% of teachers have met the standards, 22/32 have above-standard qualifications; there are specific plans to train excellent students and tutor weak students. Thanks to that, the percentage of students with good academic performance increased from 53% (2010 school year) to 56% (2012); in the 2011-2012 school year, the school ranked second in the district in terms of the percentage of excellent students; for many consecutive years, the school has been recognized as an Excellent Advanced School at the provincial level.

After applying the criteria for quality education, Dung Town Kindergarten recognized the school's limitations. That is the criterion for facilities. Due to the small area and small number of classrooms, the number of students exceeded the regulations (on average, each class group had 45 children); the area of ​​the new classrooms was only 6m2/child (according to the minimum regulation of 8m2/child); the playground, common room, bedroom... did not ensure the area according to the regulations. That was also the reason why the school only met 25/31 criteria and achieved level 2 quality standards. After self-assessment, knowing that the school's biggest limitation was facilities, the school's self-assessment council widely informed teachers and parents and especially actively advised the Party Committee, People's Council, and People's Committee of the town to propose a plan to expand the area of ​​the kindergarten campus; calling for investment resources to build classrooms to ensure standards.

Mr. Thai Viet Thao, Head of the Examination and Quality Assurance Department, Department of Education and Training said: “After Circular 42 of the Ministry of Education and Training was issued, the Department invited the Ministry of Education and Training to train 146 people working in quality assurance, then this team retrained the education management staff of the schools. And currently, the whole province has 172 people who have been granted external assessment certificates by the Ministry of Education and Training. This is a favorable condition for the education sector of our province to promote the quality assurance of education. Accordingly, in this school year, we strive to have 50-60 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and 6 high schools to be externally assessed. This is also an opportunity for schools to “look in the mirror, self-adjust”, know their strengths, weaknesses, and current situation to have solutions to improve the quality of teaching and learning...”.

Article and photos: Thanh Phuc