Nguyen Van Duc, vice chairman of District 12 People's Committee, said the population in the area increased by 22,000 people each year. In the 2020-2021 school year, the district has 8,120 first graders.

If each class has 50 students then 65.5% of the students can go to school in both morning and afternoon. However, 815 students may not be admitted to public schools because their residency in HCM City is less than a year and 669 students haven't been registered for temporary residence.

In order to solve the problem, the district authorities will reduce the number of full-day classes and build more schools.

"Our first plan is designed so that each class would have 45 students but it has to be raised to 50 due to lack of space. But this solution still can't meet the demands so the number of students that go to school in both mornings and afternoons will be reduced," he said.

Ta Tan, head of Tan Phu District Department of Education and Training, said that they could only afford to let 30% of the students at 193 classes go to school in both mornings and afternoons. In the new school year, they will have 7,097 new first graders which mean full-day classes for students from second to fifth grades will have to be changed to half-day classes.

"That's the only way to organise full-day classes for the first grade and teach the new curriculum. However, in the next school year, we'll have to teach the new curriculum for other grades too and face the class shortage problem again," he said.

He went on to say that their temporary solution is to organise classes on Fridays and Saturdays. Tan said that at the time being, all children can go to school no matter if they have household registration in HCM City or not.

At a meeting with 24 districts on August 24, Duong Anh Duc, vice chairman of HCM City People's Committee, also directed all localities authorities to find solutions to let all children go to school no matter what their temporary residence conditions are.

Duc urged the localities authorities to review and ensure that public school projects are on schedule, especially projects that are supposed to be completed in 2020. Teachers must ensure that even when students can only attend half-day classes instead of full-day classes, they will not miss any part of the curriculum.

Duc also asked the Department of Education and Training to provide advice to the city people's committee about support policies for primary students at private schools. Tienphong/Dtinews

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