Ready for 2015-2016 academic year

(VOV) - A new academic year will begin in two weeks when some 22 million students nationwide will attend ceremonies on the same day. Preparation of training schedules, teaching aids, and infrastructure has been completed.

To prepare for a new school year, Ho Chi Minh City has opened 44 new schools at all levels and has recruited more than 4,000 new teachers. The municipal education sector is under great infrastructure pressure due a rapid growth in the number of students.

Nguyen Van Hieu, Deputy Director of the municipal Department of Education and Training, explained that “this year, there will be 1.5 million students in Ho Chi Minh City, an increase of over 85,000 at all levels with 52,000 entering kindergartens and primary schools. To meet requirements, the city has invested in building new schools and classrooms to ensure full-day schooling and improve teaching quality.”

Students of the Ba Vi Boarding School for Ethnic Groups mark the opening of their new school year with flags and banners. (Photo: VNA/VNS/ Quoc Khanh)

One change this year is that Ho Chi Minh City is encouraging a collaboration between Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training and the UK’s Department of Education. Many schools are already working with native English-speaking teachers to implement the program. In addition, new textbooks and teaching aids have been acquired.

According to Phan Xuan Hien, Deputy Director General of Ho Chi Minh City’s Books and School Equipment Company,” since the beginning of May we’ve bought more than 4 million textbooks for the new school year. Our distribution system has been re-organized and shops are staying open until 7 p.m., including weekends.”

There will be nearly 700,000 students at all levels in Nghe An province in the 2015-2016 academic year. The closer the new school year approaches, the more support is being provided by local authorities for ethnic students, particularly those in remote areas.

Despite the demands of farm work, in recent days Xeo Thi Hue and her fellow villagers in Huoi Cut hamlet, Tuong Duong district, have gathered at the local kindergarten to help teachers repair the kitchen roof and tidy up the school campus.

With deft hands, Hue and the other Kho Mu women have fashioned many cute toys and gadgets for the local children.

Nearly US$600,000 has been allocated for the project of universalizing preschool education for 5-year-olds in Quang Ngai province over the past three years. (Photo: Tri Nguyen)

Ms. Hue said she“has helped the teachers make toys because during the school year they work hard taking care of our children. This enables me to work all day in the fields.”

It takes 7 hours for a student to walk to Nga My secondary school, one of the most distant schools in Tuong Duong district. The school is constructing a kitchen so that 80 day-boarders can eat there.

Tran Nhat Giang, the school’s rector, said the school “has invested in building a kitchen where students can cook and coordinated with the school’s trade union to mobilize students to grow vegetables for their daily meals.”

In this academic year, the education sector will focus on implementing Project 2020 on teaching foreign languages, the universalisation of pre-school education for 5-year-olds, and developing preschool education in industrial parks and export processing zones. In remote areas, a key task is to minimize drop-outs among day-boarders. To do this, many schools in remote regions are adopting the "Day-boarding school kitchen model".

Mời quý độc giả theo dõi VOV.VN trên