City Report and Action Plan

Danang

Mr. Huynh Van Hoa
Director of Education and Training Department
Danang People's Committee
Vietnam

Ms. Nguyen Thuy Anh
Head, International Cooperation Division
Danang People's Committee
Vietnam

CITY REPORT

Education System

The educational system concerning primary education has a target age of 6 - 11 years old and is compulsory for all children.

The school year and semester is set at 35 weeks over 2 semesters. The curricula and teaching hours are divided into schools with one shift and schools with two shifts. In the case of two shift schools, teaching hours for the first shift are from 9 - 12 noon and then the second shift comes in.

Current States and Challenges

There are some difficulties and limitations.

• Danang's education quality has not yet met the requirements for human capacity building to serve the city's development.
• The State management in education and training and the school's regulations have not met the demands being made on it
• Managing methods have not been renovated.
• The operation and implementation of some staff and teachers remained unchanged.
• Financial investment in education is still limited, especially the State support for regular expenses. Of this, expenses for human work make up great portions.
• Information technology access in many schools is still limited

Challenges and experiences include how to maintain the achievements in primary education universalization and consolidate achievements by guaranteeing:

• Positive changes from quantity to quality-intensive primary education for high results by applying standards for all primary schools.
• Equality in education access for all children, especially those of ethnic groups, in mountainous areas, the handicapped and females.
• All children complete five grades of primary education.
• Strengthened management at all levels of city, district and schools to reform daily activities of primary education.
• Comprehensive innovation and development in education, especially, the State decentralized administration, and implementation of consecutively 9-year basic education.

There are flows of immigrants to Danang. The immigration is a big problem for Danang primary education universalization. The rapid urbanization in Danang has had bad effects on children's study because some poor households and farmers cannot keep abreast of the changes of new jobs. The one shift study has brought good outcomes. However, 30 percent of primary students have to follow the 2 shift based study. Therefore, there is a need to build new schools and to supplement budget for education.

ACTION PLAN

Goal

To train students to be well-rounded people who have the right standard of morality, knowledge, health, arts and employment; to form people with good characteristics and ability, meeting the demands of development of Vietnam.

Targets and sub-activities:

A. Target 1: To improve the enrollment of students to be 100 percent

a. Kindergartens

• To do their utmost to improve nutrition and general care, especially for children of 5 years old.
• At the kindergartens, teachers should aim for children to be:
  • familiar with Vietnamese and literature subjects
  • familiar with Mathematics
  • familiar with the surrounding environment
  • trained in traditional values such as expressing respect and love to their grandparents, parents, teachers, sisters and brothers and friends
  • educated and trained in the skill of beauty loving, public item preservation, honesty, self confidencec
  • able to develop physically and emotionally, to form the first factors of characteristics and to prepare them to enter the first grade of primary education.
  There is a mandate that primary education cannot be separated from pre-school education.
• To do surveys by age children at the kindergartens
• To teach and bring children up effectively, preventing malnutrition and obesity
• To contact communities regularly for information dissemination regarding child care, prevention of child diseases and proposed census of communities.

b. Measures to deal with students among immigrants:

• To coordinate with administrators at the railway station and bus parks for the information on the immigrants that they know
• To carry out surveys on immigrants, analyze the data and then make a detailed list of the children among immigrants
• Primary schools near by the railway station and bus parks are responsible for coordinating with the administrators of the above places for carrying out the surveys and then enroll the children in schools. The district governments should help primary schools in this matter. School hours for these students should be flexible. The students can be taught both at schools and outside schools because the children must have time to earn their living. Combined classes can be held.
• These children are likely to be dropouts. Therefore, there is a need to set up a close coordination. Schools should coordinate with parents or sponsors, owners of the houses where the children rent for staying, security officers at the railway station and bus parks, centres for street children, "families of love" and district governments for taking care of these children.
• To continue organizing "The Day for Golden Friends" so as for students to help other children in difficulty as regard to textbooks and notebooks, pens and clothes. This will also help to educate children with human loving awareness.

B. Target 2: To improve education quality

There is a need to ensure the full participation of: (a) Families; and (b) The local government

a. The role of families

• To build the movement of "New civilized families", "learning curiosity families" and perfect families in order to support primary education universalization.
• To mobilize communities to participate in the supervision and assistance of poor families to get children to schools.
• To call for the assistance and funds from NGOs such as "Hands of Hope', "Mr. & Mrs. Mitterand's Fund" "East Meets West," to help poor families with textbooks, notebooks, bags and meals.
• Associations of students' parents at all schools should be responsible for contacting families for a better education, student awarding and study encouragement.
• To bring schools, families and society in a close relationship. Families should have contact with schools and teachers on a regular basis.
• Parents should be responsible for building good families, facilitating children to be well-rounded people, and participating in educational activities that schools organize. Parents should require schools to inform them of their children's outcome in each semester and at the end of each school year.

b. The local government

The local government should:

• include primary education universalization in the local socio-economic development plan
• allocate enough budget for education
• give its order to district governments to devise primary education universalization plan which should set out goals such as:
  • 100 percent of the children of age 6 to be enrolled in school
  • 100 percent of students to finish primary school and enter junior secondary school after 5 years
  • Planing for effective teaching and learning, opening extra classes for students with lower performance
  • Screening teachers who have big problems in health and ability of teaching and to provide teachers with training courses
• set out a long term plans for primary schools for the next 5 years to 10 years
• set out a plan to build schools made of concrete
• enhance education socialization
• organize annual meetings with the participation of education administrators
• mobilize, manage and make full use of all resources to implement primary education universalization
• grant awards to individuals and organizations who make great contribution to primary education universalization.
• receive and manage aid resources for primary education universalization.
• create jobs for poor families to get their children to school
• disseminate information on drug prevention through the mass media
• assign departments concerned to implement the following tasks:
  • Dept. of Planning and Investment: to include primary education universalization in the local plan, to make plans for building new schools and upgrading existing schools and to call for domestic and foreign organizations' assistance
  • Dept. of Finance: To allocate in time the local budget for primary education universalization and make plans to increase the budget for education year by year
  • Dept. of Health: To give the best primary health care for primary students, to prevent diseases, to deliver sanitary and safe food, and to give immunization program to children
  • Dept. of Labour: To create jobs and ensure income for poor families
  • Dept. of Cultural Affairs and Information: To disseminate the law on primary education universalization, the law on Education, the Law on Children Protection, Care and Education to people.
  • Justice Dept.: To give best practices of completing certificates of birth for children at the age rank of primary education universalization.
  • Social associations: To organize social activities relating to primary education universalization and mobilize families to participate in these events.
  • Dept. of Education and Training: To foster education administration on primary schools and to carry out targets, programs and plan for primary education
• To implement measures to improve education quality by:
  • Mobilizing 100 percent of children at the age of 6 to school by launching "the Day that All People Bring Children to School"
  • Improving lesson instruction
  • Helping lower performance students to keep pace with other students by giving them extra classes so that they do not become of studying and drop out.
  • Calling for the assistance from social organizations to support learning conditions (such as textbooks, means of transportation to go to school like bicycles, public transportationc)
  • Granting "education credit" to poor families
  • Increasing the ratio between teachers and students for classes that have disabled and agent- orange children
  • Determining the role and responsibilities of teachers in primary education universalization and education quality
  • Practicing education quality inspection and reporting it to parents for a better collaboration in education