Twenty percent of teachers do not master the skills for using teaching aids, 44 percent cannot use microscopes, while only 49 percent of students can do experiments in groups sometimes. A lot of students cannot understand maps and diagrams.

Students of Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in HCM City do experiments

“The methods and the skills of using teaching aids of teachers still cannot meet the requirements of the renovated education programme at the secondary education level,” said Associate Professor Dr Vu Trong Ry from the Vietnam Institute for Education. Ry and his colleagues have finished a survey on the use of teaching aids at 24 primary and 24 secondary schools in six provinces and cities.

Both teachers and students stay confused

The survey has found out that up to 20 percent of secondary schools do not master the skills of using teaching aids, especially experiment skills.

In chemistry teaching, 17 percent of teachers have been found as not mastering the technique to implement the experiment which shows iron reacts with sulfur. As for biology, 44 percent cannot use microscope. In physics, 61.9 percent of teachers do not understand the order of operations when conducting research lab circuits connected in series and parallel circuits.

Meanwhile, 42.4 percent of students said they never or very rarely use patterns and samples to seek information, while 49 percent of students never or rarely can do experiments themselves in groups.

This explains why the proportion of students who have low skills of using learning tools is very high, at 25.4 percent in chemistry, 73.5 percent in geography, 56.9 percent in biology and 32 percent in physics.

It’s necessary to set up standards

Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, a teacher of the Nguyen Trai High School in Binh Duong province, admitted teachers still keep puzzled in using teaching aids. They do not have sufficient professional skills and standard qualifications in using equipment.

The problem is that they never can attend training courses on the skills, and that they need to manage themselves to satisfy the requirements for the teaching.

Also according to Ha, a lot of teachers do not want to renovate the method of teaching without any teaching aids, which was once applied for a long time. They fear that the renovation may fail completely, and they fear they would have to spend too much time on preparing for the lessons.

In fact, a lot of teachers have good skills of using teaching aids, but they hesitate to use the tools, and only use them when necessary, at the lessons, where inspectors attend to verify the teaching quality.

Other teachers have admitted that they only show the equipment and devices to students during the lessons, while they dare not let them use the equipment, because the equipment is too expensive and students may spoil them.

In fact, teachers say, there are no equipments and devices for students to use to do experiments, or the equipments have low quality. Even simple equipments such as voltmeter ampere meter cannot meet the requirements. A teacher complained that she and the students repeated the same experiments for 3-4 times and got different results, which were different from the result described in the textbook.

Le Thi Hong Gam, Teacher of the Phu Rieng High School in Binh Phuoc province, affirmed that the low quality of teaching aids has led to the unsuccessful use of teaching aids in teaching.

The big waste

Ha said that most of the schools still have not had the classrooms specifically designed for every subject. In many cases, teaching aids have been left unused and kept in storehouses for years. A lot of broken equipment has not been repaired, while schools keep using the money from the state budget to buy new equipment.

“I know Casio FX570s have been distributed to schools, but teachers do not use the calculators, when students cannot borrow them, which is really a big waste,” she said.