Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved aproject to replace crumbling classrooms and upgrading educational equipment tocreate the best conditions for students.

Aimingat helping schools meet infrastructure criteria in order to implement newnational educational curriculum, the project looks to address the classroomoversize in big cities and remove makeshift classrooms in mountainous areas.

Fully-packedclassrooms in big cities have forced many primary schools to reduce theteaching time.

Studentsof Chu Van An Primary School in Hoang Liet ward, Hoang Mai district, forexample, have to take only four classes per week instead of five because schoolfacilities are unable to accommodate increasing and large number of children.

PhamXuan Tien, Deputy Director of Hanoi’s Department of Education said: “The numberof primary school students in each class has surged from 60 to 69 in densely-populateddistricts such as Hoang Mai, Cau Giay, Thanh Xuan. Three children have to shareone desk designed for two.”

Meanwhile,the ideal number for each class set by the Ministry of Education and Trainingis 35 students at primary school, 45 at secondary school.

ProfessorNguyen Minh Thuyet, chiefeditor of the new curriculum for comprehensiveeducation reform, said ensuring facilities implement new educational curriculumis a necessity but having 60 students in one class is impossible to ensureteaching quality.

Accordingto the Hanoi Department of Education, there is an additional number of 25,000to 30,000 children sent to kindergarten each year. Meanwhile one or twokindergartens of each commune are currently unable to accommodate thesenumbers.

Innorthern mountainous areas located hundreds of kilometres away from Hanoi,students have to sit in shabby classrooms temporarily made from bamboo.

Thisyear’s rainy season flooded and swept away hundreds of classrooms and equipmentof schools in the highlands of central provinces of Thanh Hoa, Nghe An andnorthern province of Son La.

Accordingto the Ministry of Education and Training, educational facilities and equipmentfail to meet demand. As much as 77.1 percent of classrooms nationwide areclassified to have strong structure. About 68 percent of educational equipmentmeets teaching requirements.

LauMi Po, Secretary of the Party Committee of Lung Tao commune of Ha Giang province’sDong Van district where solidly-constructed classrooms have been built at 328schools, said it is hoped that the investment would not end at buildingclassrooms only but also go towards constructing outdoor playgrounds.

Accordingto Pham Hung Anh, head of school facilities and equipment department of theMinistry of Education and Training, in 2019, the newly-approved project onimproving educational facilities prioritises investment in replacing downgradedclassrooms and buying new teaching equipment for primary schools. Lookingtowards 2025, more investment will be allocated for other levels.

Morethan 16,000 new classrooms are expected to be constructed for kindergartens,primary, secondary and high schools nationwide. Under the project, more than22,000 computers will be sent to schools.

Nearly50 percent of the investment will be mobilised from private sector. Theremaining will be sourced from the Government bond, State budget on educationand fund for 2016-2020 national target programme on building new rural areas.-VNS/VNA