Despite the new regulation on school hours since February 1, many schools in Hanoi have yet to conform because of teacher and student schedules.

Some private schools arrange time to end their classes early before the peak time of traffic

Dinh Tien Hoang Private High School, in Ba Dinh District has begun discontinue extracurricular classes. Regular sessions are held only in the morning and the afternoon. For this reason they have failed to obey the timetables demanded by the municipal People’s Committee.

Nguyen Tung Lam, Headmaster of the school, shared, “We have to divide our afternoon and evening classes into slots. It's just not possible to force students to stay until 7pm. On top of that, the campus is just not large enough to accommodate all the students at the same time."

Luong The Vinh Private High School has also loosened their regulations. Mrs. Kim Anh, Vice Headmaster, said, pupils who take school’s buses are able to leave school at the end of class, while those who have access to private vehicles or picked up by their families must to wait until 7pm.

Anh added that, "It poses a problem for parents to have to pick up their children at 7pm, while they get of work between 5:30 to 6pm."

Some other private schools arrange time to end their afternoon classes at 4:30 p.m before the peak time of traffic.

Many public schools also ‘break’ the law, allowing the students who finish their classes early to go home before 7 p.m.

Mrs. Kim Anh, Vice Headmaster of Luong the Vinh Private High School, said, “It is more suitable for us to be allowed to finish the afternoon classes before peak hours. We can reduce time for taking a nap after lunch rather than wait until 7 p.m.”

In practice, private schools can easily hire teachers more easily who can arrange their schedules around the new regulations.  Still, they only have a certain number teachers to make sure they can take care of classes.

They finish morning classes at 11:30am and start the afternoon classes at 12:30pm. Because of this, final lessons cannot end before 5pm, very close to the time pre-schools, primary and secondary schools, schools and state employees leave get off.

New regulation forces students to stay until 7pm