Solving many backlogs before the new school year

Leaders of the city's education and training sector have issued many urgent instructions to resolve outstanding issues to enter the new school year.

On August 20, the Department of Education and Training (DoET) of Ho Chi Minh City held a summary of the 2024-2025 school year and deployed tasks for the new 2025-2026 school year for high school.

Improve the effectiveness of teaching methods

According to statistics from the Department of Education and Training, Ho Chi Minh City currently has 2,015,436 high school students, including 948,487 primary school students, 716,300 secondary school students and 350,649 high school students. The entire city after the merger has 1,583 schools from primary to high school with more than 51,000 classrooms.

In the last school year, Ho Chi Minh City was in the top 10 provinces and cities with the highest average high school graduation scores in 8/12 subjects. The education and training sector always focuses on improving the quality of foreign language teaching and learning. The report shows that 39 schools have been approved by the city to implement advanced, high-quality school models.

On August 20, first graders in Ho Chi Minh City returned to school, getting acquainted with their classrooms and teachers. Photo: HOANG TRIEU

In the new school year, the city continues to effectively maintain the digital classroom model; teaching English and computer science remotely, broadcasting to primary schools in Can Gio, Cu Chi, and Con Dao. Organizing real-time online teaching helps schools that lack English and computer science teachers to organize learning for students, ensuring quality and subject curriculum.

Ms. Lam Hong Lam Thuy, Head of the General Education Department of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, said that in the new school year, the city will continue to deploy schools to effectively implement the 2018 Program to ensure scientific and pedagogical values; maximize and effectively exploit facilities and teaching equipment to help students meet the requirements as prescribed. Effectively implement 2-session teaching/day, improve the rate and quality of 2-session teaching/day, promote the application of information technology in teaching and educational management. Improve the effectiveness of teaching methods and forms, testing and assessment to develop students' qualities and abilities. Build a bank of test and assessment questions for subjects, ensuring consistent and synchronous implementation according to the 2018 Program.

At the same time, exploit and use textbooks, learning resources, and teaching equipment effectively and in accordance with reality. Build digital classrooms, digital learning resources, digital lectures for subjects and educational activities...

However, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, in the 2024-2025 school year, most schools will ensure enough teachers. However, there is still a shortage of teachers, mainly in subjects such as English, IT, physical education, fine arts, and music due to the lack of qualified teachers. For this group of subjects, schools will conduct guest lectures and sign labor contracts to ensure enough teachers...

Clear direction of vocational education

Also on August 20, the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City held a conference to summarize the 2024-2025 school year and deploy tasks for the 2025-2026 school year for Vocational Education (VET) and Continuing Education (CED). The conference was held at Binh Duong Medical College (Phu Loi Ward, Ho Chi Minh City).

Speaking at the conference, Mr. Nguyen Van Hieu, Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City, emphasized the important role of education in general and vocational education in particular in training high-quality human resources of the city.

After merging with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau provinces, Ho Chi Minh City has 481 vocational training establishments. Of which, there are 103 public units and 378 private units. There are 78 colleges, 77 intermediate schools, 28 vocational training centers, 74 vocational training centers and 224 establishments registered for vocational training activities.

"I believe that vocational education is one of the highlights that the city is expecting to develop human resources, especially in the period of 2025-2030, when Ho Chi Minh City is expected to become a megacity," said Mr. Hieu.

Reporting at the conference, Mr. Nguyen Chi Thanh, Deputy Head of the Department of Continuing Education - Vocational and University Education, Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, said that in 2024, many vocational training institutions have promoted the application of information technology in managing the training process.

Some non-public institutions are proactive in building cooperative relationships with countries in the region; promoting links and cooperation with universities, helping students and graduates have conditions to study and work at a higher level.

However, vocational education still has many difficulties such as: low enrollment, many units do not meet the enrollment requirements; the rate of teachers does not meet teaching standards in all forms; the network of vocational education facilities is concentrated in urban areas, the number of vocational education facilities in rural areas is small, the training scale is small; vocational education facilities do not have many programs linked with junior high schools and high schools in the area, this has made career guidance and streaming more or less difficult.

On the eve of the new school year, the leaders of the Department of Education and Training requested that heads of educational institutions focus on strategic orientation to 2030, with a vision to 2045. In particular, clearly defining the quality, orientation and brand of each institution.

"One of the issues of particular concern is the removal of obstacles in the joint training between vocational schools and the continuing education system. How can vocational school students have the opportunity to study additional cultural subjects, create conditions to participate in the high school graduation exam, and meet the legitimate needs of learners?" - Mr. Hieu expressed.

In the 2025-2026 school year, the Ho Chi Minh City vocational education sector aims to attract about 30% of junior high school and high school graduates to the vocational training system. In particular, the proportion of female students is encouraged to reach about 35% of the total new enrollment target; coordinate to organize additional training and regular training for about 60% of the workforce of enterprises in the area; propose to build about 2 high-quality schools.

At the same time, implement the target of reducing about 30% of public secondary schools in the city according to the roadmap of the Overall Project on arranging public universities, colleges and secondary schools in Ho Chi Minh City in the period of 2025 - 2030.

Class sizes are still high.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the scale of school network development has always been concerned and invested in construction, but it has not yet met the learning needs of local children. The number of students per class is still high compared to the primary school regulations due to difficulties in school construction projects, high population growth, and some wards do not have primary schools. This is one of the issues that the education sector will have to pay attention to in order to improve the quality of education.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/giai-quyet-nhieu-ton-dong-truoc-them-nam-hoc-moi-19625082020115897.htm