VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese parents have been in a high dudgeon in reaction to a surprisingly high number of reports of deaths of children at nursery schools.

One child, a 20-month-old, has reportedly died at a nursery school in Nha Trang City on her first day of school. The girl’s parents brought her to the school on Friday morning and had to collect her dead body later that afternoon.

The nursery school, a private one in Nha Trang’s Vinh Tuong ward, was unlicensed and substandard. It was run by Nguyen Thi Tuy Phuong. The victim was Pham Thi Dieu, daughter of Pham Van Luc and Nguyen Thi Hien from Binh Dinh Province.

The couple, who had come to Nha Trang to work as hired workers the day earlier, had decided to leave the child at the nursery school. Upon hearing the tragic news, both of them passed out and were hospitalized.

The death of the toddler, news of which appeared in many local newspapers, is indicative of a major failure of Vietnam’s education system.

Five months ago, Lo Thi Hen, while attending a nursery school in in the northern province of Lai Chau, was killed after a wall fell on her.

The school had fallen into serious disrepair after just five years of operation. There had been warnings of the risk from the deteriorating conditions, but no one in charge heeded them.

Eight months ago, a healthy 12-month-old child died abnormally at the Thien Than Nho Nursery School in Hanoi. The father, Tran Xuan Bach, said he could not understand how his daughter could die in the midst of so many teachers. The cause of the death was never established.

In February 2010, a child reportedly died while taking a nap after lunch at the 1/6 Nursery School in Tan An City. Again, the reason for the death remains unclear.

Local education departments and responsible agencies all promised to investigate to find the causes of the deaths and take proper actions against the schools. Many of the schools were indeed forced to shut down, while caregivers were prosecuted.

However, Vietnamese parents bemoan the reality that no after-the-fact actions can help bring the children back to their families. The deaths have unnerved a number of parents in recent times. On education forums, they direct the spearhead of their criticism at the Ministry of Education and Training, which is accused of insufficiently investing in the development of the nursery school system.

“What do you see in Vietnam – an abundance of universities left idle because of no students, and a shortage of nursery schools which are overloaded,” a parent wrote.

Another parent with the nickname “bebi” made a sarcastic comment that, while poor parents don’t know where to leave their children when they must work, they hear everyday on mass media about a program producing 20,000 PhDs, and costing VND14 trillion. That program has been widely decried as “too costly” and “ineffective”.

“Poor parents may wish that a small part of the huge sum of VND14 trillion could be spent to build more nursery schools, so that their children can have peaceful days,” he wrote.

Dat Viet