These are the shares of Prof. Dr. Le Anh Vinh, Director of the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences at the seminar "Let Vietnamese children grow up with a pressure-free childhood" held on March 13.

The rate of children with mental health problems is increasing

According to Mr. Vinh, the rate of Vietnamese children with mental health problems is increasing. This pressure not only affects higher education levels but also affects primary and secondary schools. According to a report, many students have to study more than 10 hours a day, leading to sleeping less than 8 hours a day.

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Pressure on students not only comes to higher education but also to primary and secondary school.

Particularly at the primary level, in recent years, the Ministry of Education and Training has made many changes in testing and assessment to relieve pressure on students. One of the changes is not to evaluate by scores. Regarding this issue, Professor Le Anh Vinh once conducted a study related to the assessment of students' learning outcomes, which was divided into 3 groups: "Only graded", "both graded and commented", "only comments from teachers".

The research results show that the group of students who were "graded only" and "graded and commented on" did not improve much, while the group who were "only commented on by teachers" had good improvement. This result, according to Mr. Vinh, may be contrary to what many people think.

“The group that has both scores and comments is no better than the group that only has comments, because once they have scores, no one cares about the comments and the core problem lies with the students. Therefore, scores are not everything,” said Mr. Vinh.

Mr. Vinh believes that primary school is the foundation for training a child's qualities, personality, and attitude, not for cramming knowledge and achieving as many achievements as possible. However, adults are always under pressure to do something to see, and the easiest thing to see is scores and achievements through exams.

"Many parents tend to have too high expectations for their children, thinking that getting all 10s, winning Math and English competitions, and becoming champions are high expectations. But if that is considered the biggest goal for education, especially primary education, then I think that is low expectation.

High expectations are for children to develop confidently and have the best foundation for them to go the long way, not to take the fastest possible first steps,” said Mr. Vinh.

"Just go into the exam room with your love for Math."

As a 10-year leader of the International Mathematical Olympiad, Professor Le Anh Vinh was impressed by the story of a student in the team he used to lead. On the evening before the Olympic competition, he often took the students out to eat and chat at a cafe. One student told him very nervously: "There are only 2 more days until we don't have to take the Math exam anymore."

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Prof. Dr. Le Anh Vinh, Director of Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences. Photo: Thuy Nga

According to him, this story would be very normal if it were the words of a normal student. But this is one of the 6 students of the Vietnam International Math Team.

“That statement shows how much pressure this student is under. I told him that I don’t have any KPI for next year to be better than last year. I personally don’t have any pressure, as long as his results reach this level, his parents will be very proud. Therefore, in the next two days, he should enter the exam room with the most relaxed mood like an elementary school student, take the exam with the greatest love for Math possible and those are the 6 most beautiful and interesting math problems of his student life,” Mr. Vinh recalled.

The boy that year has now finished his PhD at a top university in the US. According to Professor Le Anh Vinh, relieving pressure on students is extremely important.

“The destination of the exam is only a very small part. Whether the student is a champion or not is also very small. The bigger thing is the journey we take and how we go is the most important thing,” said Mr. Vinh.

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