HCM City (VNA) - Anumber of schools in Ho Chi Minh City which were named national-standardschools - an honour given to schools that meet criteria ranging from studentperformance to infrastructure - no longer meet that criteria because their classroomsare too crowded.

But even though the schoolsdon’t meet the national standard, they haven’t lost their certificates.According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the national-standardschool title is valid for five years. After five years, the schools must bereassessed and the certificate may be withdrawn if they fail to meet thecriteria. Officials say that none of the schoolsin HCM City that won the title, in some cases many years ago,have ever been reassessed.

Lac Long Quan schoolremains the only primary school among 18 schools in District 11 that has beenrecognised as a national standard school. When the school received the title in2000, it had 30 classes with 35 students each, which met the criteria set byMinistry of Education and Training.

Just one year later,however, the school failed to maintain small class sizes due to growth in thestudent body that wasn’t matched by investment in teachers. The school now has32 to 36 classes with 39 students each. Though its title has long expired,its certificate still has not been revoked, Thanh Nien (YoungPeople) newspaper reports.

An official of theEducation Division of District 11 said that the school is locatedin a densely populated area. The school prioritises making space for childrenover maintaining a title, the official said.

Nursery school 27 in BinhThanh district also had to “break the title” of level 1 national-standardschool when it increased the number of students in each class by 10 percent.

Vu Thi To Loan, the nurseryschool principal, said, “We cannot keep the title because there are too manychildren in the area. Nursery schools in neighbouring areas are also facing thepressure of population growth. If we do not ‘break the title’, where willchildren learn?”

Ngo Van Tuyen, head of theEducation Division of Binh Tan district, said only two of 22 nursery schools inthe district are national-standard schools. Only one of 18 primary schoolsreceived the title.

“Each year, there arethousands of students newly enrolling in schools. Each class always has morethan 40 students. We do not know when another school might be able to meet thestandard,” he said.

According to the city’sDepartment of Education, 138 out of 1,100 nursery schools, 63 out of 493primary schools, 19 out of 270 secondary schools and two out of 198 highschools are national-standard schools.

This number is consideredlow compared to other provinces and cities.

A city education officialsaid that many schools met the criteria relating to teacher quality, but mostof them failed to meet criteria for the area of playgrounds, the number ofclassrooms and the number of students per class.

According to Ngo Van Tuyen,head of the Education Division of Binh Tan district, schools in the outskirts havespace but are strained by population growth as migrants move towards the city.Schools in the inner city have no space.

Binh Tan district has about710,000 people, 60 percent of whom are migrants.

In fact, many schools nolonger prioritise winning the title of national-standard school and say theywant to focus more on improving the teaching quality.

The principal of a nurseryschool in Binh Thanh district said that the school had to invest ininfrastructure and improve teacher quality to be granted the title. Butnational-standard schools received funding in the same way as normal ones.

The annual budget forschools depends on the number of students.

Budget cuts hurt teachers’wages and made it hard to hire additional teachers in order to reduce classsizes to meet the national standard, the nursery school principalsaid.-VNA