According to MOET, private tutoring is provided based on real demand from students and parents.

The licensing of private tutoring activities is still included the list of conditional business fields stipulated in the Investment Law. MOET has twice requested the Ministry of Planning and Investment to add private tutoring to the list and submit to the National Assembly for approval. This aims to strengthen management over the private tutoring activities.

Once private tutoring is listed as a conditional business field, MOET will issue a legal document to replace the Circular 17 with new regulations, setting sanctions on violators.

Nguyen Bich Lan, who once managed a learning center in Hanoi, said private tutoring has been a conditional business field, but put under the management of MOET. But if this is stipulated in the Investment Law, MOET will only play the role of managing teachers’ qualifications.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has sent a dispatch to the National Assembly’s Economics Committee and Ministry of Planning and Investment on adding private tutoring to the list of conditional business fields.

Asked if private tutoring is legalized and the problem of forcing students to go to extra classes will be settled, Lan said it’ll be difficult to do this. However, she thinks that the law will stipulate sanctions on violators, so it will help ease the problem.

The headmaster of a secondary school in Hanoi said under the Circular 17, the board of management has the responsibility of supervising teachers of the school to find out if they provide unlicensed private tutoring service. However, she admitted she cannot do that.

“I am managing a school, I’m not on the right position to ‘catch teachers running extra classes’. Even if I can find someone providing private tutoring without license, I won’t be able to punish him, because giving punishment is not my function,” she said.

Putting private tutoring under control is what MOET has wanted to do for many years, but no perfect solution has been found.

According to Nguyen Quoc Binh, headmaster of Le Quy Don Secondary and High School in Nam Tu Liem district in Hanoi, it is necessary to prohibit general school teachers from providing private tutoring. The private tutoring should be the job of learning centers. This means that students must not to go the extra classes where the teachers are their teachers at school.

Many parents complain that their children have to go to extra classes unwillingly and called for prohibiting private tutoring. However, experts said that private tutoring cannot be prohibited because this is a real demand from students.

Vu Dung 

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