The plan by the Hanoi authorities to have 50 percent of nursery and general schools meeting the national standards by 2015 proves to be unfeasible for Hanoi, which seriously lacks the land fund and money.

Commercial hub lacks schools

Only 12 out of the 74 schools in Hai Ba Trung district have been recognized as the national standard schools. There, in the commercial hub, are the primary and secondary schools situated on the same locations. The busy commercial streets have taken the places of general schools.

The district’s authorities have been making a lot of exertion to develop general schools in the locality. It plans to have two schools to be recognized as national standard schools in 2012, namely the Quynh Mai nursery school and Minh Khai Secondary School.

According to Dinh Thi Lan Duyen, Deputy Chair of the Hai Ba Trung district, a school needs to satisfy five requirements in order become national standard schools. All of the schools in the district can satisfy four of them, including the personnel structure, education quality and education socialization. However, most of them cannot meet the standards in material facilities.

Some schools are lucky enough to have land plots to build schools, but it’s still unclear when the construction of the schools would begin. The Ba Trieu Primary School is to be built on the land plot at No. 114 Mai Hac De Street. However, the site clearance has not been completed, while students still have to go to cramped classrooms every day.

Hanoi authorities have reserved the 3500 square meter land plot on Lo Duc Street for the Le Ngoc Han Secondary School (the students of the school now have to share the same material facilities with the Le Ngoc Han Primary School). A land plot covering an area of 1500 square meters has also been allocated to the Chim Non nursery school. However, since the site clearance has not been finished, the schools remain on… paper.

Lacking money, but still cherishing ambitious plans

Only 12.1 percent of high schools have been recognized as meeting national standards (24 schools). The figures are 14.6 percent and 125 for nursery schools.

According to Pham Huu Hoan, a senior official of the Hanoi Education and Training Department, the 105 non-state owned schools out of the total 207 schools in the city are facing the biggest problems.

“Non-state owned schools lack land fund and money to upgrade themselves. Therefore, it’s impossible to force them to build up national standard schools,” Hoan said.

Hanoi strives to have seven more national standard schools this year, including two private schools.

However, Hoan said bigger difficulties are still ahead. “The easiest works have been done already, while the most difficult ones are awaiting us,” he said.

The wide gap in the management abilities of districts’ authorities in Hanoi has also been cited as an obstacle to the process of building up national standard schools.

The former Ha Tay province, now is a part of Hanoi, has been going very slowly in developing standard schools. In 2011, Thanh Oai district’s authorities promised to build up six standard schools. However, the plan has failed with no school becoming standard school.

Nguyen Thi Lan Huong from the Hanoi Education and Training Department said the city authorities have been allocating budgets for building schools, but the money has not been used effectively.