Public kindergartens in Hanoi have been ordered to give priority to five-year-old children as part of a move to universalise pre-school education.
 |
| Illustration photo |
Pham Thi Hong Nga, deputy director of the city\'s Education and Training department, said this was a short-term solution to the shortage of public kindergartens and the increasing numbers of three and four-year-olds being registered.
She said the department expected that parents would send their three-to-four-year olds to private schools to help reduce overloading in public kindergartens.
Nguyen Thi Lan Huong, chief of the city\'s Education and Training Department\'s Pre-school Division, said that if any public kindergartens in the city rejected five-year-olds, parents were recommended to inform the department.
She said this would lead to the headmaster of the kindergarten being disciplined.
It is estimated that the city now has 837 kindergartens, including 683 public ones and 154 private.
Parents still have to queue up overnight to register their children at two public kindergartens – Binh Minh in Tay Ho District and Thanh Cong A in Dong Da District.
Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, a mother of a five-year-old girl from Ba Dinh District, said both she and her husband preferred to send their daughter to a public kindergarten because of the reasonable tuition fees, extra space and trustworthy quality of teachers.
Huong, chief of pre-school education division, said the growing population in the city was to blame for the overloading of public kindergartens, especially in densely populated inner districts.
For instance, there were up to 2,500 children at the age of three to five in Dong Da District\'s Thanh Cong Ward, but the two local public kindergartens could cater to only 1,700.
High tuition fees at private kindergartens is forcing parents to queue up overnight to register their children in public kindergartens.
Pham Thi Hong Nga said that the department was trying to put an end to the overloading at public kindergartens by 2015.
"We plan to submit to the Hanoi People\'s Committee a programme of school building, including more public kindergartens," she said.
In the meantime, private kindergartens will be encouraged to improve their quality.
