VietNamNet Bridge – Continuing education centres citywide are in such an alarming condition that they may not be a good alternative for the 30% of 9th graders who fail public high school admission tests yearly.
What continuing education in HCM City is now facing – lack of infrastructure, funding, high-quality teachers, effective management, and the like – can been seen throughout the country’s educational system as a whole.
Yet, since it is only a kind of non-traditional education, it is shouldering a relatively large burden of the general problem. Take infrastructure as an example. Continuing education centres in many districts citywide are facing a serious shortage of classrooms.
The centre in district 8, for instance, has to borrow classrooms from a nearby elementary school most of the day. The one in district 7, on the other hand, is so small that its 24 sq. m classrooms house 54 students per class meeting. The number can sometimes be as high as 70 students.
And break time is unbearably noisy with 380 kids crammed in a total area of 260 sq. m, said some teachers at District 7 Continuing Education Centre. Due to lack of space, learning tools and equipment at many centres are also put away in libraries and storerooms rather than brought to class for use.
The incapacity of teachers is another major problem. "Full-time teachers at continuing centres are very enthusiastic but most of them aren’t very good teachers since the good ones are all accepted by traditional public high schools.
“So only those who don’t know where to go or are at the bottom of the recruitment list come to teach continuing education. There are cases when teachers at public high schools are so weak that they are transferred to continuing education ones,” said a continuing education centre manager.
As for part-time ones, it is difficult for these centres to invite high-quality part-time teachers to teach with their tight budgets. And during a recent review conference, many directors of continuing education centres in HCM City asked for more systematic management.
According to them, all local centres should be directly managed by the city’s Department of Education and Training. This is yet to be the case in HCM City, though the Ministry of Education and Training does require municipal education departments to supervise their own continuing education systems.
At present, many of the continuing education centres at 24 districts throughout the city are being managed by district education departments, which often prioritise public secondary schools, primary schools and schools for the disabled over continuing education ones.
(Source: Tuoi Tre) | 
