VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has decided to apply a lot of measures to rescue non-state owned schools, which are on the verge of dissolution because of the lack of students. However, it’s still unclear if the measures can help.

A meeting was gathered by MOET to discuss the solutions to rescue non-state owned schools after the association of the schools sent an urgent petition to the Prime Minister, warning about the disappear of the schools.

MOET’s Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga said after the meeting that two big issues were discussed at the meeting: First, what to do to help non-state owned schools enroll students. Second, how the policies should be designed to help schools develop.

Many people founded schools voiced the same complaint that the currently applied enrolment mechanism is unreasonable, which makes it impossible for non-state owned schools find students.

Under the mechanism, students can be enrolled in any university in Vietnam, people founded or state owned, only if they get the university entrance exam marks equal or higher than the floor marks stipulated by MOET every year.

In general, the students, who can satisfy the requirements, would prefer enrolling in state owned schools rather than people founded schools. As a result, people founded schools don’t have students to enroll.

Therefore, the floor mark scheme, for the last many years, has been considered the barrier for non-state owned schools that prevents them from enrolling students. The schools believe that it’d be better to remove the requirement in order to keep the universities’ doors opened more widely for students.

Some educators have suggested organizing a single national exam instead of the two separated ones; the high school finals and university entrance exams. Meanwhile, universities and junior colleges would enroll students after considering their results from the national exam.

Analysts commented that the thing that most people-founded schools strives for is to increase the supply of students by lowering the requirements on candidates. They said this could be a reason why MOET has rejected the proposals on removing the floor mark scheme and organizing one instead of two national exams.

Ga, at the meeting with the press on March 5 afternoon, said if lowering the requirements on candidates, or setting up easier conditions. This would help non-state owned schools enroll enough students in the immediate time. However, this would do more harm than good in the long term. Once schools accept the students with low learning capability, they would not be able to make the products that can satisfy the demand in the society. If so, the products of the schools – the graduates – would be refused, which would damage the prestige of the schools.

Though MOET has been warned that if it does not accept lower requirements on candidates, a lot of people founded schools would be dissolved, Ga still has affirmed that the training quality must be the top priority. He said MOET would set up reasonable policies to help people founded schools enroll students, but these would not be the measures that may affect the quality of the graduates.

The policies, according to Ga, could be the ones relating to the methods of calculating floor marks, or the new enrolment schemes for schools.

A report by MOET showed that 1.2 million students attend the annual university entrance exams, including 900,000 high school graduates.

Ga has informed that no more university would be set up in big cities, while new schools would be set up only in the Central Highlands and the northwest.

Compiled by C. V