Minority boarding schools affirm their role
Nhan Dan Newspaper March 24: The network of minority boarding schools has affirmed its role of turning out a contingent of qualified Party and government cadres for highlands regions over the past decade.
The affirmation was made at meeting to review 10 years of operation of the boarding schools held in the northern mountain province of Thai Nguyen on March 22 and 23. The national programme for "strengthening and developing education in mountainous, remote, island and difficult areas," was launched in 1991, but the network of boarding schools was commissioned half a century ago.
The training of cadres for highlands regions, which are home to 53 Vietnamese minority communities, has been defined as an important part in the Party and government's ethnic policy.
There were 346 minority boarding schools with 59,160 pupils located in various parts of the country in the 1999-2000 academic year.
The Nha Trang Pre-University School recruits students from 27 minority communities, the Viet Bac Highland School, 18 minority communities, and the Dong Nai Ethnic Boarding School, 15 minority communities.
With the government's budget allocation of about VND 876.2 billion over the past ten years, the Ministry of Education and Training built or upgraded the boarding schools in townships to facilitate the study and training of both students and teachers.
The past ten years saw 190 boarding school students awarded the title of excellent student at the national level and 417 others at the provincial level. More than 9,000 boarding school students were inrolled in universities and colleges and 4,041 others in three-year job training schools.
In addition, 74 boarding school students won medals at national literature, mathematics and English contests, 226 bagged medals at national sports events, and 26 others were honoured at beauty contests for students.
Some 91.2% of minority boarding school students passed final exams as against the national average of 94.98% in the 1998-99 academic year.
Education and Training Ministry held that operation of the network failed to match the government's investment as well as the schools' contributions. Minority boarding schools paid much attention to increasing their recruitment while failing to improve and renovate teaching methods.
As a result, the training quality of those education establishments was lower than expected with only 30% of the total students ranked above the average level.
It was reported at the meeting that minority students who failed to continue their study at high school or higher education establishments were not assigned with suitable tasks for socio-economic development in their respective localities.
The education sector will strive to obtain secondary education universalisation in all remote, highland and island areas by 2010.
The boarding school network has set the target of comprehensively improving the training quality, raising the qualification of the teaching staff on a par with the national standards by 2005 and having 100% of minority boarding schools solidly built by 2010.
It also targets to have 25% of its students enrolled in colleges and 50% in universities by 2010. (VNA)
