First grade enrollment in Vinh city: paradox of surplus - shortage

(Baonghean) -The trend of choosing schools and classes has been "popular" in the past 5 years, causing many primary schools in Vinh city to be overloaded. In the 2011-2012 school year, although this situation has cooled down somewhat, it is still "hot"...

The paradox of surplus and shortage…

This situation has appeared for about 5 years now. Especially with schools in the central area with "brands" such as Ha Huy Tap 2, Le Mao, Cua Nam 1, Le Loi, the number of students applying to study is always higher than the number of students surveyed in the area many times. Agreeing to let students study or refusing is always a difficult thing for school leaders, because most of the students who are not in the school's area have legitimate reasons for applying to the school. There are many cases where the children of people with positions and power entrust and rely on them...

The pressure on class size is clearly shown in the classrooms of first graders who have just enrolled at Le Mao Primary School. Although all classrooms are currently equipped with desks for 2 students, each desk has 3 or 4 students. Le Mao School has 6 first grade classes this year. According to the regulations of national standard schools, each class should not have more than 35 students, but now the number of students in each class is over 45. Due to the large number of students, this year, instead of the entire school being allowed to have only 30 classes as prescribed, the school has increased the number to 31 classes. At Ha Huy Tap 2 and Le Loi schools, the overload situation is similar. Many parents after bringing their children home from school cannot help but feel heartbroken when seeing their children having to study in hot and cramped conditions. Teachers themselves having to teach such a crowded class is also a difficulty because in addition to teaching knowledge, primary school students also have to worry about their food and sleep, which is very difficult.

Regarding the overload situation, teacher Dang Van Canh - Principal of Le Mao Primary School added: For many years now, the number of students applying to Le Mao Primary School has been increasing, partly because of the school's long-standing reputation, and partly because it is a central school with convenient transportation. The large number of applications makes it very difficult for the school to consider candidates. The top priority is still children with registered residence and housing in Le Mao ward. Then other candidates are considered.

An overloaded classroom at Le Mao Primary School.

It's the school year but many desks at Dong Vinh Primary School are still empty of students.

The fact that parents are competing to send their children to key schools and central schools has caused many schools in the city's neighboring areas to fall into a state of "student shortage". At Dong Vinh Primary School, Principal Tran Thi Mai Lien is worried that the first grade has started school for nearly a week but the school has not yet received enough students, even though the ward has invested nearly 6 billion VND in the past two years to build two new, spacious school buildings. The whole school has 3 first grade classes and, according to the plan of the City Education Department, the school will accept 100 students. However, the school now has only 83 applications for admission, and the classrooms still have many extra desks and chairs.

The school principal added: Before the new school year, we conducted a survey in the hamlets and found 140 children of first grade age. However, in reality, only more than half of them went to school in the ward. The biggest difficulty of Dong Vinh school is that it is spread out, with three blocks, grade 9, Vinh Quang, and Vinh Lam, located close to Nguyen Trai, Doi Cung, and Le Loi schools, so students in these blocks all asked to go to schools near their homes to study. Furthermore, because Dong Vinh secondary school merged with Hung Dong commune secondary school in the past three years, many parents are worried that their children will not have a school to continue studying after finishing primary school.

Need effective solutions soon

According to teacher Tran The Son - Head of Primary School Department - Nghe An Department of Education and Training, the current situation of parents competing to send their children to key schools is largely due to "herd effect". In fact, Nghe An Department of Education and Training does not direct any high-quality school model and there is no document from the Ministry guiding the criteria for high-quality schools. In addition, it is not accurate to say that suburban schools are not better than central schools because the schools located in Vinh city are currently mostly national standard schools with facilities and teachers of equivalent qualifications.

Although the Department of Education and Training's viewpoint is quite clear, the education sector has not yet had any effective solutions to limit the overload situation at primary schools in the city center. In addition, the sector's direction has not been finalized, so even though it knows that many schools have been continuously overloaded or have recruited more students than allowed, it has not learned from experience to direct in the following years. Even in the annual enrollment plan approved for primary schools, the city's education department still approves higher enrollment targets for schools than actual conditions, leading to each class having 10 to 15 more students.

Regarding this issue, teacher Tran Thi Mai Lien - Principal of Dong Vinh Primary School gave her opinion: For schools with difficulties like Dong Vinh, should the City Department of Education and Training issue documents requesting overloaded schools not to accept students from Dong Vinh Ward? For example, at Nguyen Trai Primary School, this year the quota was only three primary classes, but now it has recruited four classes.

On the school side, knowing that enrolling more students than the quota is “inevitable”, they have come up with a few solutions for many years. For example, at Le Mao School, it is certain that among the application files, there will be students who have just applied for a household registration to legalize the procedures, so this year the school has resolutely eliminated applications whose household registration has only been registered for 1 or 2 years, or whose names are on the household registration but in reality, upon inspection, they are not in the area. With this solution, this school year the school has eliminated more than 10 applications with suspicious signs. However, in the long term, the education sector must have a synchronous solution, or must create conditions and mechanisms for schools to expand and upgrade classrooms. Only then can the current situation of shortages in some places and overload in others be resolved.

Khanh Ly - My Ha