Lacking schools has always been the biggest headache for the leaders in HCM City, the city with a high number of immigrant workers.

Children enter high school, parents bathed in sweat

Thang, a parent, has been shuttling between his house in Hoc Mon district and the Han Thuyen High School in Phu Nhuan district for the last three days to follow administrative procedures to enroll his daughter in the school.

Thang has to go back and forth many times because he still cannot gather all necessary documents. “Two days ago, I was told that I need to show 8 pictures. When I brought 8 pictures, I was told that I still need the confirmation of the secondary school, where my daughter went to,” he complained.

“Why don’t they tell me about all the things I have to do at once, so that I do not have to go back and forth?” he added.

The man has also complained that it’s not easy to obtain all necessary documents. It’s now the enrolment season, where schools’ leaders and teachers are very busy. Therefore, it took Thang many days to meet the headmaster of the secondary school to get confirmation, and a whole afternoon to get a stamp on the document.

The Han Thuyen High School is considered an “open school” in HCM City, which does not set too strict requirements on students and accept students from different districts in the city. Therefore, the school has received a high number of applications for studying at the school.

“I am luckier than other parents,” Thang said. “Some parents are from district 12 or Binh Chanh district, very far from the school. However, they still have to travel the long distances to register seats at the school for their children.”

“I heard that in Hanoi, parents had to jostle, damaging the school’s fence, to buy the application forms for their children. We seem to be luckier in HCM City, but all of us have been bathed in sweat to obtain the application forms,” he added.

However, fulfilling administrative procedures is not the only worry for the parents like Thang. A woman complained that the school asked to pay money to buy school uniform.

”275,000 dong per suit and every student has to buy two suits,” the woman said. “Besides, the school has also told to buy uniforms for physical exercise lessons, at 108,000 dong.”

“If counting on the tuition of 308,000 dong, I will have to spend nearly one million dong at once,” she complained. It’s clear that school uniform would better the images of the students in the city. However, this is really a big burden on the poor parents who have to cut down expenses in the context of high inflation.

Many parents, though making every effort to fulfill administrative procedures, still could not register the study for their children. A parent said she was told to contact the HCM City Education Department directly, because the school does not have the competence to deal with the case. Meanwhile, another woman shook her head when she was asked: “Is it ok now?”

The hard pressure on primary schools

A representative of the HCM City Education and Training Department said that the department works out with districts’ education sub-departments every year to learn about the demand for the new academic year. However, though more schools and more classrooms are built up every year, primary schools still get overloaded with the overly high number of children.

The official said that the city would put 591 new classrooms into operation in the 2012-2013 academic year, while 1400 old classrooms will be upgraded.

“We have built more schools, but the additional schools prove to make nothing if compared with the increase of the students,” said Dang Thanh Tuan, Head of the Go Vap district’s education sub-department.

“It would not be a big problem to arrange classrooms for the children who have permanent residential certificates in HCM City. However, we still have to arrange seats for the students, who are the children of immigrant workers as well, which is really a headache,” he said.

Go Vap district has been well known as a “hot point” in HCM City with schools always overloaded, because there are a lot of companies, enterprises and industrial zones located in the district.

Source: GD & XH/ VN