May-07-2008
VietNamNet

Too many highland ethnic minority children are failing to complete universal primary and junior secondary education.

An Education and Training Ministry meeting that reviewed the programme found the inability of the children to switch from their own, mostly unwritten languages, to Vietnamese was part of the reason for the failure.

"The textbooks are still not suitable for ethnic students," Deputy Education and Training Minister Pham Vu Luan told the meeting.

Their academic content was too high and the volume of many lessons too heavy.

The academic load for ethnic minority students should be lightened, he said.

The deputy minister said that because the students were not taught Vietnamese before attending primary school they were still unable to use the language by the third or fourth grade.

The headmaster of Ta Phin Secondary School in northernmost Ha Giang Province agreed that the teaching curriculum for minority students was too difficult.

Only 60% of students could match it, he said.

The ideas expressed in the textbooks were unsuited to the both the psychology of the minority students and their Vietnamese-language skills.

A lesson that took lowland students 45 minutes to learn took 60 minutes in the highlands, said Ha Giang Province Education and Training Department representative Nguyen Viet Chuyen.

Former Deputy Education and Training Minister Tran Xuan Nhi said: "Students in the different environments of the delta and mountains can’t use the same textbooks."

A target must be defined for every stage of the education of minority students to ensure programmes that are suitable for them, he said.

Solutions

Deputy Prime Minister and Education and Training Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan told the meeting that students would be allowed to attend primary school for six to seven years or two years a grade to catch up with the common programme.

Primary school is usually five years.

The ministry would also publish instruction books for highland teachers to help them teach their students.

Missing the grade

In northernmost Ha Giang Province just 30.26% of students complete the universal education programme.

In Cao Bang Province, the graduates total just 39.9%. Ethnic students accounted for only 18, 14 and 10% of all at primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools in the 2006-2007 academic year, says Ethnic Affairs Committee deputy chairman Ha Hung.

Ethnic students in such mountain provinces as Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang and Yen Bai top the list of first-term dropouts.

Ethnic students attend communal boarding school for their secondary education.

They have the chance to board and study at provincial or central high schools if their results are satisfactory.

A few excellent students win places at vocational schools or tertiary institutions.

"Each province has many communal secondary schools but only about ten students from each pass the entry exam to provincial high school," says Ethnic Affairs Committee deputy chairman Ha Hung.