Illustrative photo (Photo: SGGP)

At the conference to review 10 years of carrying out literacy program for preschoolers aged five and two years of implementing the preschool education development project in the 2018 – 2025 period organized by the Ministry of Education and Training in the Northern Province of Ha Nam on Tuesday (Oct 20), the country still lacks almost 45,242 teachers in public preschools in the academic year 2019-2020 though 20,300 teachers have been appointed to permanent teaching positions in last academic year.

Speaking at the conference, Deputy Education Minister Ngo Thi Minh stressed that ten year ago, the government has issued the decision 239/QD-TTg to approve the preschool education development project for preschoolers aged five.

The project aims at ensuring that all children aged five countrywide receive education in one year to have good constitution, love, understanding of Vietnamese language and preparation for first grade.

Education for children aged five faced barriers because of shortage of schools, classrooms, scarcity of necessary facilities and teachers. Moreover, encouraging children to go to school in some of Vietnam’s mountainous areas and areas surrounded with rivers is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

For over 10 tens, thanks to active participation of entire machinery of state governments, social unions and the society as well as the education sector, Vietnam has been successful in carrying out illiteracy program for children aged five.

Preschools have been built across villages and residential blocks to facilitate parents and raise preschool education so that each ward / commune has at least one public preschool.

The number of preschools increased to more than 2,600 schools countrywide compared to 2010. According to the Ministry of Education and Training, policies for teachers in public preschools have been amended; accordingly, around 365,000 preschool teachers have been benefitting from the amended policies for state employees.

More than 5.3 million children go to preschools and the rate of children aged five is 99.96 percent – impressive figure, said Deputy Education Minister Ngo Thi Minh.

The representative from the Ministry of Education revealed that an illiteracy program will be carried out for children under five in the coming time. However, the program may face difficulties when being implemented in disadvantaged regions, industrial parks and export processing zones.

Worse, shortage of teachers in the Mekong Delta, the central highland region, the north central region, and coastal central region is still serious resulting low teaching quality. SGGP

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