VietNamNet Bridge – 2012 was an unlucky year of the Vietnamese education, when a lot of incidents occurred.

Exam cheating at Doi Ngo High School

Right after the high school finals finished in 2012, a reader sent to VTC News a video clip showing some students cheating the exams at the Doi Ngo High School in Bac Giang province.

The clip also showed that the proctors turned a deaf ear to the students’ behaviors of cheating the exams. Especially, some of them even gave the answers to students to copy.

Two months later, the Bac Giang provincial education department released a decision on disciplining 42 teachers and officers relating to the exam cheating case at the Doi Ngo School.

The startling wrongdoings at the economics school

In December 2012, Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Education and Training Nguyen Huy Bang announced that inspectors found a lot of big wrongdoings at the Hanoi Economics University.

The wrongdoings were found in the personnel, postgraduate education and joint training, investment in material facilities and the financial mechanism.

Especially, in 2009 and 2011, the economics school wrongly collected 51 billion dong from students and other subjects. The ministry has suggested heavy discipline on a lot of officers and leaders of the school, and forced the school to pay back 3 billion dong to the state budget.

Tens of students committed suicide

Tens of female students have committed suicide so far this year because of different reasons. The noteworthy thing is that small children also tried to kill themselves because they felt tired of their lives.

Most recently, on December 4, a third grader of a primary school in Go Cong Tay district tried to commit suicide because he was alleged of stealing teacher’s money. The student was luckily rescued.

The fact that more and more students commit suicide has raised big worries among parents. Psychologists have blamed this on the educational system which did not pay appropriate attention to educating life skills to students.

A teacher committed suicide in the presence of leaders

In August, 2012, Ly Kim Lien, a teacher, who writhed under the unjust decision by the leaders of the school where she was working for, decided to commit suicide right at the Thu Duc district’s education sub-department.

Lien was forced to leave the Nguyen Trung Truc School because she was uncooperative with the leadership and repeatedly made mistakes. However, Lien denied the mistakes.

Teachers and students followed new working shifts for one week

Since February 1, 2012, Hanoians had a new working and learning schedule. Universities, junior colleges, vocational schools and high schools begin their lessons before 7 am and finish lessons after 7 pm. Meanwhile, nursery, primary and secondary schools had first lessons at 8 am and finish at 5 pm.

The new working schedule then caused a mess in a lot of families. Parents complained that they could not arrange time to bring children to schools and then come back to their offices.

As such, the plan on changing the working and learning schedules failed completely, because it could not help settle the most serious problem now – the traffic jam.

A teacher hospitalized because of student’s essay

Ha Thi Thu Thuy, a young teacher, asked students to write their thoughts about the folk-songs showing the images of Hanoi in the past “Gio dua canh truc la da/ Tieng chuong Tran Vu canh ga Tho Xuong” (the bamboo branches swaying lightly in the wind/ Sounds from Tran Vu temple’s bell and cock-crow heard, signaling a new night watch).

However, since Vietnamese language has many homonym words, “canh ga Tho Xuong” was understood by a student as a traditional Vietnamese dish – chicken broth. A student of the Lomonosov commented that in the past, Hanoians liked eating the Tho Xuong chicken broth.

The problem was that the teacher, when marking the essay, did not realize the mistake and gave the student 8/10 marks, the mark only given to good school works.

The teacher was then violently criticized for the mistake, which then caused a shock to her and she was hospitalized for treatment.

VTC