Due to the unexpected Covid-19 pandemic, students all over the nation have to temporarily stop their school learning for the last 2 months. Many regions launch formal lessons on their local television channels and on the Internet.
Associate Prof. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Head of the Secondary Education Department (under MOET), said that the ministry has already issued an instruction document to ask schools maintain good contact with parents and students to deliver home assignment if necessary and guide their self-learning process. However, at that time, the focus was knowledge revision.
As the Covid-19 outbreak became more complicated, demanding a longer school break, MOET continued to issue a document promoting distance learning via the Internet and TV channels. Accordingly, when students resume their school time, teachers will evaluate their learning process through tests.
At the moment, MOET is preparing a detailed document regarding corresponding teaching material, lesson content, teaching staff, and educational facilities for distance learning. Any regions that can satisfy these requirements to ensure the learning quality can have learning result officially approved.
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh commented that this content is not at all new. In the MOET’s guidance on how to carry out the current public education program to promote ability development of pupils from the academic year of 2017-2018, MOET encourages different evaluation types, including observing in-class participation, academic reports, learning projects, scientific-technological research, experimental results, presentations, and educational mission fulfillment.
Therefore, online learning results is one form in the above list, which means it can be formally approved if MOET’s demands are met. These demands are expected to be released soon for all regions to be more active in the teaching-learning process.
The Prime Minister has asked that MOET introduce a plan to exclude any unnecessary learning content for this special academic year to reduce the learning duration. Yet, this plan has not been released, making schools quite confused at the moment.
Dr. Thanh said that MOET once issued a document to ask schools to actively check their teaching content in the current textbooks and eliminate any challenging or repetitive sessions among subjects. Only basic knowledge in each subject should be mandatorily taught.
Presently, MOET itself is checking and cutting unnecessary content in all grades in order to publish a guiding documents as soon as possible so that schools can easily and consistently follow in case students still have to prolong their break.
MOET reported that it has already adjusted the agenda of this academic year twice. If the Covid-10 pandemic is well controlled, students can come back to school at the beginning of April. At that time, along with the approved result of distance learning, teachers can still finish the school year in accordance with the new agenda.
