VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has been urged to apply a special policy to encourage students to join national teams to attend international competitions. 

The members of the teams could be allowed to enter universities without having to attend entrance exams.

According to MOET, there are 86 schools & divisions for the gifted throughout the country, including 70 schools under the management of local education departments, five schools belonging to higher education establishments, two belonging to universities and nine divisions belonging to high schools.

There were 56,654 students in the 2010-2011 academic year, while the figure rose to 69,554 in 2015-2016, accounting for 2.1 percent of total high school students. 

These are the major sources of students for Vietnam to train contestants to attend international competitions on basic sciences. 

Also according to MOET, with limited budgets, provinces have difficulties in upgrading facilities and improving teaching aids for schools for the gifted. 

This is why 28 out of 75 schools, or 37.3 percent, still cannot meet the national standards. At the schools, there are not enough classrooms, facilities and dormitories.

Some provinces have allocated land to the schools to build new campuses, but they don’t have money to implement the projects.

MOET has been urged to apply a special policy to encourage students to join national teams to attend international competitions.

Headmaster of Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted Vu Duc Tho complained that the school’s area is small. He is seeking the provincial authorities’ permission to expand the area.

Le Hong Phong is the school of the International Physics Olympiad gold medalist Dinh Thi Huong Thao, who won the medal the last two years.

At the conference reviewing the implementation of the 2010-2020 program on developing schools for the gifted, representatives of the schools complained that they had difficulties in developing the teaching staff.

Do Thi Hoa, headmaster of the Tran Phu High School for the Gifted, said excellent students don’t want to enter pedagogy schools, and schools for the gifted cannot find good teachers to recruit. 

“We need a good math teacher, but there has been no application in the last two years,” Hoa said.

Hoa also pointed out that it is difficult to select best students for competition teams. 

“Students don’t want to join the provincial team to compete at national and international competitions,” she said.

“If they don’t win high prizes, they will have to attend the university entrance exams like other students. Since they spend most of time with the teams, they won’t have enough time to prepare for the exam,” she explained.

She suggested a new policy which allows students to be enrolled in universities if they are selected to become members of the national competition teams.

Thanh Mai