Foreign teacher teaches English at Ngo Si Lien Secondary School (Bac Giang city).

Creating a new wind

In the last two academic years, with the local budget and others mobilized for social resources, the province has spent 79.4 billion VND (3.4 million USD) buying equipment and investing in English classrooms in schools. The provincial Department of Education and Training and relevant departments and agencies issued documents detailing conditions, procedures, and ways to take foreigners to teach and exchange in schools. 

In the school year 2016-2017, 10 volunteers from the OHH Organization (Brazil) came to Bac Giang to support English teaching and learning at the Bich Son Elementary School (Viet Yen district), the Bac Giang High School for the Gifted and the Ngo Si Lien High School.

Nguyen Van Them, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training, said that Bac Giang is one of the leading localities in the country to organize the English teaching and learning with foreigners in schools, which is appreciated by the Ministry of Education and Training. 

In the school year 2016 - 2017, 15 out of 835 schools in the whole province applied English teaching and learning with foreign teachers. The figure increased to 45 schools in the 2017-2018 academic year, including high schools, secondary schools, primary schools and kindergartens.

Inviting foreign teachers to participate in teaching and exchanging in schools has contributed to improving the quality of English education in the province. At the national contest for the best students in Grade 12 in the school year 2017-2018, five of six local participating students won prizes.

There remain many shortcomings

An English lesson with a foreign teacher at Dinh Ke Primary School (Bac Giang city).

However, besides the initial results mentioned above, the organization of teaching and learning English with foreigners over the past time has also revealed many shortcomings.

As they are not included in the main programme, English classes taught by foreigners are only held in Bac Giang city and some townships in Lang Giang and Viet Yen districts ... 

Each English lesson with foreign teachers costs about 30,000 VND (1.2 USD) (for teachers, electricity and facilities). Thus, with the current regulation on the number of extra classes by the provincial Department of Education and Training, on average, a secondary school student must pay 240,000 VND (10.3 USD) per month and high school students 360,000 VND (15.4 USD) per month. Along with other contributions, this is a great expense for parents.

According to the regulations of the Department of Education and Training, learning English with foreign teachers is arranged out of the regular school hours but due to the lack of human resources and in order to reduce costs and expenses arising from picking up and arranging accommodations for foreign teachers, over past time, almost all schools have arranged two or three consecutive learning hours per week, even "encroaching" into the regular school hours.

Initially, most students were excited to wait for lessons, but only after a time, there was a division: hardworking students with good ability made remarkable progress while those with average or weak learning capacity became worse as they did not follow the programme. Because learning English with foreign teachers is not mandatory, many students voluntarily quit the lessons.

To continue the effective implementation of the scheme and create opportunities for local pupils to improve their English skills and knowledge directly with foreign teachers in schools, the above-mentioned shortcomings and difficulties must be solved in the 2018-2019 school year.

Online English Learning Account presented to needy students

(BGO) – My Do secondary school (Bac Giang city) has coordinated with Hanoi - based GDO Online Education and Communication Joint Stock Company (GDO) to gift 57 online English learning accounts to the students of impoverished and policy beneficial families.

 

Bac Giang equips 72 secondary schools with English learning devices

(BGO) – According to the Department of Education and Training, some 15 billion VND (660,400 USD) has been mobilized from the Bac Giang provincial budget to invest in building smart rooms with the devices for English teaching and studying in 72 local secondary schools.

 

Le Huyen