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Ms. Van Thi Bach Tuyet, Deputy Head of the specialized delegation of the Ho Chi Minh City National Assembly Delegation |
In order to realize the goal of educational innovation and improving training quality with a focus on solutions to reduce the number of students per class, increase the rate of students taking 2 lessons per day, in addition to speeding up school construction projects, many synchronous solutions ought to be carried out to remove problems about the funding of school construction projects, preferential policies on land.
According to Ms. Van Thi Bach Tuyet, Deputy Head of the specialized delegation of the Ho Chi Minh City National Assembly Delegation, the city needs to have preferential policies on land.
Despite the city’s spending upgrading and expanding schools to meet the teaching requirements of the General Education Program (GDPT) 2018, there are still many facilities, especially in districts with rapid urbanization and socio-economic development and districts including Thu Duc City, districts 7, 12, Tan Phu, Binh Tan, Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon and Cu Chi where most export processing zones and industrial parks are located have seen the increasing mechanical population leads to great pressure on study places every year.
However, at present, due to the lengthy public investment process and the restricted compensation payment and land funds for school development, the progress of new construction and expansion of schools have not met the actual requirements. Therefore, the city hardly finished its goal of ensuring the number of students per class.
To temporarily overcome difficulties in facilities, educational institutions have been finding many ways including temporarily borrowing facilities from neighboring schools, but it is a short-term solution. In the long-term, the Government needs to have more specific preferential policies on land to call for social contributions to school development to ensure the implementation of the 2018 GDP program.
For localities and central urban areas that has restricted land funding, the Ministry of Construction should have flexible regulations in school construction standards such as increasing the number of floors and building density.
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Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Economics Phan Ngoc Phuc |
Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Economics Phan Ngoc Phuc said that the city needs to have additional capital of over VND10,000 billion for building schools.
From 2021 to 2025, the city has allocated a total investment capital of more than VND10,490 billion for 369 projects reaching 7.3 percent of the medium-term plan. Currently, the Department of Planning and Economics is advising the municipal People's Committee to add additional capital that can be mobilized to report to the Government and submit for approval from the National Assembly.
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Chairman of the People's Committee of Binh Chanh District Vo Duc Thanh |
Chairman of the People's Committee of Binh Chanh District Vo Duc Thanh proposed an increase in investment capital for school construction.
In the past 7 years alone, the district has completed the construction of 50 new schools with 1,529 classes. Recently, the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City passed a resolution to raise investment capital from VND139.3 billion to VND186,181 billion for Vinh Loc A Secondary School or from VND100 billion to VND138,613 billion for Tan Kien Primary School. The capital for Vinh Loc A Kindergarten construction project was also raised from VND 60 billion to VND 99,855 billion. As a result, the district has accelerated compensation payment, site clearance and construction in the shortest time.
However, with the current high rate of mechanical population growth, the district has seen about 4,000 students who are children migrant workers per year. Subsequently, Binh Chanh District needs to build 39 new school projects, of which 27 projects are transitioned from the 2016-2020 period and 12 new school projects have been approved.
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Chairman of the People's Committee of Binh Tan District Nguyen Minh Nhut |
Specifically, 27 transitional projects have been allocated VND980 billion of medium-term investment capital by the city, with a shortfall of VND3,520 billion. Without additional funding, the locality will not be able to complete the projects and overcrowded schools and big classes will still maintain.
Chairman of the People's Committee of Binh Tan District Nguyen Minh Nhut supposed school construction is high on the city’s list of priorities.
In the school year 2022-2023, Binh Tan district has 165 schools with 3,715 classes to receive 130,069 students. It is forecasted that the number of students in all grades will increase by 11,922 students in the school year 2025-2026.
To solve the problem of demand for classrooms, the district strived to complete 16 school construction projects at all grades with a total of 494 classrooms - these are projects that have been arranged by the city for medium-term investment between 2021 and 2025. In addition, 10 projects in the district are facing compensation problems or a lack of investment capital.
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Ms. Huynh Le Van Tra from the HCMC Department of Construction |
Ms. Huynh Le Van Tra from the HCMC Department of Construction disclosed that from 2020 to now, the Department of Construction of Ho Chi Minh City has not received a new school building approval application, but mainly a project extension. Specifically, Binh Tan had to adjust many projects due to ground clearance problems, and some projects implemented since 2010 have not been completed so far, so the capital has doubled.
On the other hand, the prior regulations stated that the average land area per student was specified separately for inner city, outlying districts and suburban areas, but now it is applying the general criteria for all corners of the country, causing difficulties for localities due to different characteristics of population distribution. Because of this regulation, schools in many places are degraded, but the locality only proposed repairing.
Therefore, the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City should propose to the central ministries and agencies to adjust the regulation to facilitate the construction of schools in each region.
