VietNamNet Bridge – The HCM City Education and Training Department has urged schools to equip with interactive whiteboard in a plan to modernize teaching aids. However, schools keep indifferent to the plan.

Under the department’s plan, 412 nursery schools in the city would have 412 whiteboard sets, while 194 primary schools would have 582 sets. With the unit price of VND181 million, the program would cost VND180 billion, 50 percent of which would be sourced from the city’s budget, while the other VND90 billion would come from students’ parents.

Le Hoai Nam, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said at first the city authorities planned to prop up 100 percent of the boards’ value, but later, the financial support has been cut down to 50 percent due to the financial problems.

It is estimated that every parent has to pay VND15,000 per month and pay for two years to be able to use the boards.

Mai Xinh, a teacher of the Anh Mai Primary School, believes that the teaching equipment would help make the lessons more interesting to students. Especially, this would help better the teaching and learning of English with supporting software.

Nevertheless, the topic for discussion now is not if the interactive whiteboard is helpful in school, but whether schools can arrange money to buy them.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diep, Headmaster of the Nguyen Binh Khiem Primary School in district 1, said she still does not know how she can find money to spend on such expensive things.

Diep said the principal authorities should prop up 100 percent of the money needed to buy interactive whiteboards. If parents find the boards really useful for their children, they would contribute money to buy more boards. In the immediate time, it is very difficult to persuade parents to pay money for the new teaching aid.

The heads of some districts’ education sub-department said a lot of schools have refused interactive whiteboards because they don’t have money and cannot collect money from parents.

Binh Chanh district, which has been told to buy 49 boards, only accepts five boards for nursery schools and 21 boards for primary schools. Similarly, Phu Nhuan district’s schools have registered to buy 28/42 boards, and district 7 only 23/44.

Luu Hong Uyen, Head of the district 6 education sub-department, said there are only 200 children in every nursery school on average, therefore, VND90 million would be a heavy burden on their parents. Uyen admitted that it is impossible to mobilize such a big sum of money from the parents.

The headmaster of the Nursery School No. 14 has sent a dispatch to the Tan Binh district education sub-department, saying that the school refuses the equipment because the number of children at the school is modest, while the school is still under the construction.

Mai Huyen, a parent in Tan Binh district, noted that it would be too costly and unnecessary to equip with interactive whiteboards. If schools have money, they would rather to buy toys, which are seriously lacking at schools, instead of the expensive boards.

Huyen affirmed that interactive whiteboards should be used to teach the children aged five and more, while children can learn with the boards for 15-20 minutes every day, because the strong light would harm their eyes.

Le Huyen