Star Viet Nam: Education

VietNamNet Bridge – Many schools get puzzled when implementing the pilot English teaching programme for first graders. The problem is that the demand far exceeds the teaching ability.

The HCM City Education and Training Department has decided that students will not have to sit the exam to be able to enroll in intensive English classes. Those students, who want to study English, will only have to register their demand with the schools. However, the problem is that there are too many students who want to learn English, while the number of English teachers remains modest.

“160 first graders have registered to learn English. The students are now put in the same classes with the students who do not have the demand to study English. However, they will be put in separated classes from the second semester. What I am worried about is that the splitting cause a great chaos,” said a teacher of Bau Sen Primary School in District 5 in HCM City.

Nguyen Xuan Bao, Headmaster of Bau Sen Primary School, said that he still does not know what to do with the students who have registered to study English. The students must be divided into four classes, while in current conditions, the school can only arrange two classes. “Recruiting English teachers proves to be the biggest problem now, because it will not be easy to find teachers if we can only offer modest pay,” Bao said.

Under the current regulations, the teachers who teach English to first graders, under the pilot programme must obtain TKT certificate granted by Cambridge ESOL. In order to obtain the certificate, teachers must attend a training course in English teaching skills with foreign teachers. However, the problem is that teachers themselves would have to pay the tuition for the training course, estimated at six million dong.

“I agree that TKT certificate is a necessary document which shows teachers’ qualification. However, it is unreasonable to force teachers, who have modest income, to pay for the training course,” said a headmaster of a primary school in District 3 in HCM City.

She went on to say that the school really wants to pay the tuition for the teachers, but it cannot arrange the money. Meanwhile, students only have to pay 50,000 dong a month for English classes, which is not enough to pay the teachers.

Shortage of classrooms also causes headache to primary schools. The city’s Education and Training Department has decided that every class can only have a maximum of 35 students. Meanwhile, schools say they cannot arrange enough classrooms for so many students,

“We have no idle classrooms. All the rooms have been used to ensure that all the children in the district can go to school,” headmaster of a primary school in Tan Phu District said.

It seems that many schools are puzzled when implementing the pilot English teaching programme. At some schools, students, who who want to study English, are put in the same classes with those who don’t. At other schools, students who study English are put in special classes. Yet other schools still have not begun to accept registrations from students who want to attend English classes.

Headmaster of a school in District 3 complained that his school is still awaiting guildelines from the local education sub-department. “Our teachers are very worried. They fear that when the classes are re-arranged, this will affect the teaching quality,” he said. As first graders are small children who may not adjust well and find it difficult when put in other classes where they have to sit with new friends and study with new teachers.

Though the HCM City Education and Training Department has decided that first graders can also begin to study English, some educators still believe that it would be better to start teaching English in the second grade.

P. V

VietNamNet Bridge – Ton Than is the revered teacher of many well known and successful scientists, senior officials, educators and journalists. He used to teach af Trung Vuong Secondary School, and is now a senior researcher at the Vietnam Education Science Institute.

The teacher with respectfed personality

In the speech delivered at the ceremony celebrating the achievements of Vietnamese Professor Ngo Bao Chau after the professor received the Fields Medal in India three months ago, Professor Chau mentioned Teacher Ton Than as his respected teacher, who deserved credits for making Professor Chau who he is nowadays.

Ton Than is also the former teacher of many other famous people, including Professor of Mathematics Vu Ha Van, Professor Le Hong Van, Professor Vu Dinh Hoa, Professor Dang Vu Minh and Journalist Thu Uyen.

Ton Than’s house these days is full of flowers sent by his old students to congratulate him on the occasion of Vietnamese Teachers’ Day on November 20.

The teacher related that many years ago, he lived in a small 22-square-metre room in No 16 Hang Da Street and earned 53 dong a month. However, he never received any gifts from students.

At that time, under the subsidization system, when people suffered financial difficulties, it was very difficult to buy goods with the coupons provided by the State. The teacher then had a student, whose father was the Director of the city’s trade department, whom Ton Than as a teacher could ask for help to buy food from state-owned department stores. But he never did.

The teacher recalled a day, when a parent came to meet him and offered him the right to buy an electric pan, a very valuable product at that time. The parent had the right to buy the pan as the award for his big achievements in production. However, the teacher said he did not dare to receive the gift, because this was really an overly valuable gift.

The teacher related that he did not receive any gifts from students, though he and his wife, both teachers, earned only small sums of money. Their salaries were not enough to buy medicine for children when they got sick or tobuy milk for them.

“In those days, though I was poor, I never received gifts from students and their parents. If I had done this, students would have despised me and I would not have been able to teach them,” he said.

However, after many times of refusing the gifts, he had to accept one kind of present: books. The students and parents, who had the opportunities to travel abroad, gave him a lot mathematics books in different languages.

The teacher said that he has been using these books as valuable materials to teach his students and write textbooks for Vietnamese students.

Dang Hoang Trung, one of his students, who won the gold medal at the 16th International Mathematics Olympiad, sent his teacher a big 20-kilogramme batch of mathematics textbooks. The student asked his mother to give the books to his teacher prior to November 20, as a gift on the occasion of the Vietnamese Teachers’ Day.

The teacher of big scientists

During the 15 years of teaching mathematics at Trung Vuong Secondary School, Teacher Ton Than “produced” 215 excellent students in mathematics, who got 42 national prizes. In 1974, Vietnam sent its team to the International Mathematics Olympiad for the first time. The team included five members, and four of them were Ton Than’s students. They are Dang Le Minh, who then got the gold medal, Dang Hoang Trung, bronze medal, Vu Dinh Hoa, silver medal.

Professor Ngo Bao Chau also won two gold medals at the later Olympiads.

Though the teacher is very proud of the students, who have been successful in their fields, he never forgets the students, who have not been so successful.

There was a student who did not visit Ton Than for many years after he finished school. Not because he did not miss the teacher, but just because he hadn’t have any notable achievements. The student told himself that he would only visit the teacher when he became successful. However, Ton Than said that he loved all his students.

Professor Vu Dinh Hoa, a student of Teacher Ton Than, now a prestigious lecturer at the Hanoi University of Education, who led many Vietnamese teams to International Olympiads, said: “No good teaching method will be useful if teachers do not love their students. With Teacher Than, we could study through the most modern teaching methods. He ralways took care of us, and he did this with his whole heart, not because he wanted to gain achievements. We understoodd this well, because we were innocent, but very sensitive children”.

Tu Uyen

VietNamNet Bridge – The annual report of the Institute of International Education (IIE) shows that the number of Vietnamese students studying at the universities in the US in 2009-2010 increased by 2.3 percent in comparison with the previous academic year. The increase is just equal to 1/20 of the galloping growth rates in the previous years

The modest growth rate

IIE Vietnam believes that the main reason behind the modest increase of the number of Vietnamese students in the US is the economic downturn which occurred at the time when students were preparing applications for studying. However, Vietnam still ranks ninth among nations which have the highest numbers of students studying in the US. The country also leads South East Asian countries in terms of the number of students studying in the US.

In the past three years, the number of Vietnamese students in the US had increased sharply by 40 percent per annum, putting Vietnam on the list of the nations with the highest numbers of students studying in the US.

Lan Anh, a student of the Hanoi University of Foreign Trade, said that she is planning to go abroad to attend a training course for a MBA degree.

“The US and the UK are the best destinations. However, I may have to go to another country which has more reasonable expenses. My family’s business has been going not very well, while the Vietnam dong has depreciated dramatically against the dollar,” she complained.

Vietnam is not the only country witnessing a decreasing rate of the number of students studying abroad. The number of international students going to the US last academic year only slightly increased and the increase proved to be much lower than the average 15 percent growth rate in the years before.

More than a half of the 25 countries which have students studying in the US have seen a negative growth rate in the number of students this year. Japan, the country which suffered the biggest impacts of the economic crisis, has seen the number of students decrease by 15 percent.

Meanwhile, China, a country that obtained high economic growth rate despite the crisis, and replaced Japan to become the second biggest economy in the world, has seen the number of students in the US increase sharply by 30 percent.

The US, though only witnessing modest growth rates in its number of visiting students, is still leading the countries in attracting international students. 700,000 international went to the US to study last year. Experts say that the figure shows the attraction of the university education system of the country.

Non-traditional markets attract US students

Meanwhile, the economic crisis has also led to the fact that the number of US students going studying abroad in 2008-2009 decreased slightly with 260,000 students.

However, the number of students going to countries which are not the popular destinations for studying, has increased significantly. Nineteen out of 25 destinations for US students are countries where English is not the main language. Vietnam, for example, attracted 700 American students last year, an increase of three percent over the year before.

This is the golden opportunity for developing countries to attract American students, because education is considered a high grade service which can attract money for the countries.

According to the US Department of Commerce, every year, international students in the country pay nearly $20 billion to the economy. Besides, the country can also attract other large sums of money, when parents and relatives of the overseas students fly to the US to visit their children.

In the crisis, the universities in the US are trying to attract more international students and compete with other markets which require lower costs, such as Australia or Singapore.

Lan Huong

VietNamNet Bridge – Every month, headmaster of a day-boarding primary school with 1000 students can pocket 20 million dong which is the “commission” paid by private catering companies. Meanwhile, the salary paid by the state to the headmaster, who has 20 years in service length, is just five million dong.

Meals for students or headmasters?

Day-boarding schools provide lessons to students both in the morning and afternoon, which means that students stay at schools during the lunchtime and have meals there, and their parents have to pay for the meals.

In general, parents have to pay 14,000-15,000 dong for a meal. However, in fact, the value of the meals is about 10-12,000 dong only, because the catering suppliers have to pay “commissions” to the schools’ headmasters. This means that in order to “express the gratefulness” to the headmasters, the suppliers have to pay the headmasters the sums extracted from the money paid by students.

Nguoi lao dong’s reporter, pretending to a headmaster of a school in HCM City, contacted a catering supplier to order meals for 1200 students a day. After hearing that the reporter wanted to order 1200 portions (15,000 dong per portion), V, a senior executive of V Catering Company in Phu Nhuan District, said that the headmaster and his school would get the commission worth 2.5-3 percent of total turnover. If the total turnover is 400 million dong a month, the headmaster and the school would pocket 10-12 million dong.

This means that the total value of every partition, after paying tax and commissions, would be 11,500 dong. “Is ththise sum of money high enough to ensure sufficient nutrition for students?” the “headmaster asked. “Of course, I can say for sure that our products will be safe and have high quality,” V affirmed.

At GK workshop in Binh Thanh District, the same reporter was told that he would get a big commission of four percent, if he orders 1200 portions.

The reporter said that the suggested commission was too low. “If you want, I will offer seven percent in commission. The commission will be paid at the beginning of each month,” a man told the reporter.

This means that the headmaster would pocket 1100 dong for every portion, and with 1200 portions, he would earn 1.3 million dong per day.

Especially, PP catering company offered even more attractive commissions than the previous two. PP said that for every 14,000 dong portion, the supplier will pay 1500 dong to the headmaster and his school.
Desserts go to… school headmasters

When the same reporter called H, the owner of KKh catering company in Tan Phu District, H said that she would give 500 dong per meal to the headmaster and another 500 dong to the school (management board, accountant and other VIPs). When the reporter said that 1000 dong was too low, H said that he would give the headmaster 1500 dong for every portion ordered, and she does not care how much the headmaster would give to the management board’s members and other teachers.

H added that besides the commissions she has to pay to the headmaster and the school, she still has to pay 2000 dong per portion to other “high ranking officials”. “Therefore, we have only 10,500 dong for every portion, so we will not have desserts. Desserts will come only once a week,” H said.

Analysts have pointed out that the “extra money”, i.e. the money headmasters can earn besides the official salaries, is so big that it is the extra money, not the salary, that is the main source of income of educators.

A headmaster of a primary school with high number of students reportedly pocketed huge sums of money just on drinking water. The headmaster declared that over 5000 water jugs were used (the real number was 4000), and thus earned 17.6 million dong. The price of every water jug was 6000 dong, but the headmaster asked the supplier to write down in the bills that the price was 12,000. This way she could earn 6,000 dong per every water jug and 24 million dong for 4000 water jugs.

Source: Nguoi lao dong

VietNamNet Bridge – In the central province of Ha Tinh, the historical violent flood is over. Roads have been cleared from mud and classrooms have been tidied up again. But hardships are still accompanying every student on their way to school

Students do not have money to pay tuition

When VietNamNet’s reporters arrived, the children of the Son Loc Nursery School in Can Loc District were having lunch. Though it is a national standardized school ,There were only vegetables, snacks and rice for lunch. The school is located in the most depressed area of the District.
After the lunch children took a nap. Some children could sleep on old and torn pillows, while less fortunate children did not have pillows. Most of the things the schools had were washed away by the flood and the those that remain are useless because they are molding.
Every student has to pay 5000 dong for a lunch at the school while in big cities each student lunch of is worth at least 15,000 dong. However, 150 children out of 313 children cannot afford the small sum of money.
Some donors came to the distraught area and gave the school some gifts including a computer, 50 boxes of milk and 10 boxes of sweets. Nguyen Thi Quy, Headmaster of the school, said that in order to arrange enough money to prepare lunches for the children, the school has to use a part of the headmaster’s and teachers’ salaries.
Meanwhile, the incomes of the 29 teachers here are very “modest”: every teacher receives 840,000 dong a month plus allowance. Meanwhile, the teachers themselves are also facing difficulties because their homes were also inundated 1-2 meters..
At Xuan Loc semi-state nursery school in Can Loc District which has 313 children, donors have brought cakes, milk, instant noodles, vegetable oil and fish sauce.
“Honestly speaking, we received a lot of clothes from a group of donors, but these are the clothes for adults and do not fit children,” the school’s Headmaster Pham Thi Hang said. “However, in our situation, every effort of support and assistance is really valuable”.
The students of the school have to pay 35,000 dong a month for lunches, while the children from poor families have to pay 30,000 dong. To be exact, they have to pay 2000 dong only for a lunch which is just enough to buy a bunch of rau muong (water spinach) in Hanoi). However, eight students still cannot afford for the lunches.
School uniform? It’s too much of a luxury
Though the aid trucks with food and clothes are still going to Ha Tinh everyday, the students of many kindergartens and primary schools in Can Loc and Huong Son Districts still have to wear torn clothing.
Nguyen Danh Tinh, Headmaster of Nam Son Primary School, related that many students have to wear shirts with large holes and no button-hole. “However, we cannot do anything, because there are up to 150 children from poor families, who are living in the poorest villages of the district. Many children even do not have sandals to go to school,” he said.
Therefore, having school uniform proves to be a luxury for students there. Teachers try to persuade parents to spend money to buy winter school uniforms, but parents answer that they do not have any more money.
Two groups of donors came to Nam Son School, giving textbooks and pens, but there were no clothes. Though winter is coming, children still have to go to school in thin shirts.
Students asked to delay in tuition payment
At Son Long Primary School in Huong Son District, which was 2-3 meters under the water, a row of rooms suffered roof damage from the flood. The school has 200 students who go to classes both in the morning and afternoon. They are required to pay 2000 dong for every lunch, but none of the students has paid because they do not have money.
According to Bui Thi Kim Thoa, Headmaster of Xuan Loc Secondary School, 65 percent of students still cannot pay tuition, though the tuition levels are very low, only 7000 dong a month for sixth graders, 8000 dong for 7th graders and 9000 dong for 8th graders. The school really wants to build up a library, worth 300 million dong, but this remains a far-away dream.
Nguyen Huong

South Korea's most prestigious university wants to make Vietnam the location of its first overseas campus, part of an internationalisation strategy billed as putting "obligation and responsibility" above revenue streams.

Seoul National University believes it can pass on academic expertise in development informed by South Korea's rapid transformation into an advanced market economy, presenting that as a motivation for its overseas-student recruitment and plans for a branch campus.
Junki Kim, Seoul National's dean of international affairs, pointed to the experience of South Korea, a nation with few natural resources, in making education a cornerstone of economic growth.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecasts that by 2025, South Korea will have the highest proportion of university graduates in the world - about 80 per cent of the population aged 25 to 44.
"When many of the developing nations are looking for ways in which they can improve through the learning process, we can provide that knowledge," Professor Kim said.
"When less developed nations are looking to drive their economies, where are they going to look? At the US and the UK? No, the gap is too huge."
He added that countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia needed "different patterns of growth. What they are looking for is an example like South Korea - where the state provides guidance and capital - and ways in which they can guide or develop a market economy."
Professor Kim said Vietnam had been "searching for ways to develop human resources in areas in which we have done relatively well", citing industries as diverse as medical services, IT, engineering and shipbuilding.
"In order to do so it needs human capital," he said. "We have been doing that - we have been providing very able people over the years."
He added that Seoul National would like to start the campus "modestly" by offering courses in development, public administration or public policy, and then gradually develop a full-scale outpost.
Professor Kim said that at South Korean universities, the rate at which tuition fees can increase is capped by the government, a rule that applies to both domestic and overseas students. This leaves little scope for charging overseas students higher fees, he added.
By contrast, he recalled a representative of the University of California, Los Angeles discussing the recruitment of overseas students to "fill the gap" left by California's budgetary crisis and declining state funding.
"We can't do that," he said. "Also, our business model is different. We are attracting overseas students as part of our obligation and responsibility to developing nations."
Professor Kim added that in terms of links with overseas universities, "the UK is the area in which we are lacking". His comments coincided with a visit to South Korea by pro vice-chancellors from five UK universities, organised by the British Council.

Vietnamnet.vn

ads2

Subscribe to StarVietnam

Followers