Students sit for an examination in Le Hong Phong High School for the gifted
Following a big gap in qualifying scores in public senior high schools between schools in the inner-city and suburbs announced by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training recently, Mr. Nguyen Bao Quoc revealed that the city will have many solutions to improve the quality of education in suburban areas.
This year's enrollment regulations were that a ninth-grade students can apply for three senior high schools of their choice. Each high school is approved for a certain enrollment quota, so if it has good results, it will attract many candidates with good academic performance, said Mr. Nguyen Bao Quoc.
As a result, the qualifying scores of those schools will increase with an average of 8-9 marks per subject. Schools attracting many good students are mostly located in the city’s downtown districts. On the other hand, the group of schools with lower standard scores are located in many different areas including suburban areas.
According to Mr. Nguyen Bao Quoc, many schools in suburban areas have low enrollment standards due to many reasons. Firstly, Students in the suburbs choose to study in grade 10 close to home for convenient transportation. Secondly, professional quality for the requirement of applying knowledge to solve practical problems in lower secondary school is not high in suburban areas.
Furthermore, the ability to access information technology of teachers, students, and parents is still low.
The People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, the Department of Education and Training, administrations in districts, and Thu Duc City always take heeds of investment in building schools, facilities, and equipment for schools in suburban areas with an orientation of building national standard schools to ensure the implementation of the government’s new rural plan.
To improve the quality of teaching in suburban districts, the department will continue to implement many measures, such as organizing seminars, listening to opinions of experts and educationists as well as creating motivation to improve quality professional management quality of schools, strengthening regular training, short-term professional training for teachers and building a digital data warehouse.
Last but not least, the sector will encourage teachers to promote their self-research, creativity, and application of information technology in teaching.
Regarding investment in facilities, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training will continue to review and coordinate with districts and Thu Duc City to speed up the construction of schools according to the planning, with a roadmap to replace inadequate equipment in operating educational institutions for the improvement of teaching quality, application of information technology to teaching and school management.
The graduation examination of junior high schools for ninth-graders must ensure the selection of students who can meet learning at the high school level in parallel with ensuring fairness between different types of education and post-secondary streamlining.
Currently, students who failed to make the cut in public senior high schools still have many other options including studying in nonpublic schools or vocational training institutions.
