VietNamNet Bridge - The effects of Circular 30 have caused primary school teachers to feel busier because they now have to spend time writing comments on students’ work, while students tend to be lazier.

Circular 30 released in August 2014 was hoped to make a breakthrough in Vietnam’s primary education. 

The major point of the circular was to ask teachers to comment on student work and not give marks. This aimed to make students feel at ease at school and help parents understand more about their children’s capability.

Pham Ngoc Dinh, director of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Primary Education Department, when reviewing the 2-year implementation of the circulation, said the new regulation has been ‘basically accepted in society’.

The effects of Circular 30 have caused primary school teachers to feel busier because they now have to spend time writing comments on students’ work, while students tend to be lazier.

Nguyen Dac Hung, director of the Education and Training Department under the Central Propaganda Committee, said: "After two years of implementation, the circular has basically succeeded."

However, teachers don’t think so. A survey conducted by the Vietnam Association for Educational Psychology Science of 630 teachers and 30 headmasters of the primary schools in five cities and provinces, including Hanoi, Hai Duong, Hoa Binh, Phu Tho and Da Nang found that teachers don’t like the new regulation.

According to Vu Trong Ry from the association, 64 percent of teachers think the circular ‘has made students lazier’, while 63.6 percent say it ’does not encourage students to make bigger efforts to better themselves in learning’.

Answering the question about student learning results after the circular was issued, 40 percent said the learning results were worse, while 48.6 percent said the results were the same.

While educators keep different viewpoints about the necessity and the effects of the new regulation, most of them affirmed that teachers had become much busier. 

This has been confirmed by schools’ headmasters and management officers.

It takes one primary school teacher 92 minutes a day at least to writ their comments and they have to work hard, including at break time.

A parent commented on her Facebook that though teachers have to spend time to make comments, the comments were useless.

“The comments like ‘you need to make bigger efforts’, ‘you have made progress recently’, or ‘you write carelessly’ cannot help students recognize their strength and weakness,” she said.

“The circular cannot create a teaching and learning motive for both teachers and students, and it does not allow to differentiate the quality of learners. If MOET does not make adjustment to the circular, this will lead to a decline in quality of an entire generation of students,” said Nguyen Ke Hao from the Hanoi University of Education.

Tien Phong