The reason is not only because of limited land and crowded population.

Lack of schools has been a long-standing problem in Hanoi and other big cities. In fact, the more developed the socio-economy and the faster the population growth, the more serious the lack of schools becomes. However, is this the only cause of this situation?

Among the many causes of the shortage of schools in Hanoi and other big cities, it is easy to identify the first two most basic causes: the land fund is too limited while the population is growing too quickly.

Speaking about this issue, Associate Professor Dr. Tran Xuan Nhi - Permanent Vice President of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, commented: the general trend in any country in the world is that the population will move to big cities to live and work. Therefore, big cities always have a very fast rate of mechanical population growth. In Hanoi, although the government has prioritized budget investment for education, compared to the population growth rate, the speed of school construction is still behind.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Thi An (former member of the 13th National Assembly), Hanoi is a developing city, many people from all over the country come here to work and settle down; not to mention that every year, millions of university graduates stay in the capital to work and live. As the mechanical population increases, the number of school-age children also increases.

According to the Hanoi Department of Education and Training, Hanoi is the locality with the largest educational scale in the country with more than 2,900 schools at all levels, over 70,000 classrooms, nearly 2.3 million students and about 130,000 teachers. With an increase of about 50,000 - 60,000 students, Hanoi has to build 30 - 40 new schools each year to meet the demand for learning places for children living in the capital. However, the current development of the school network according to the planning in Hanoi has not met the population growth rate, so the shortage of schools at all levels still occurs; including the phenomenon of local shortage of schools.

Once referred to as a "lowland" in terms of educational facilities, the student/class ratio at all levels of education in Hoang Mai district exceeds the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training. Statistics for the 2022-2023 school year show that the average preschool level in Hoang Mai district is 38.6 children/class; primary school level is 47.6 students/class; secondary school level is 45.5 students/class; high school level is 46 students/class. Not only Hoang Mai, the districts: Thanh Xuan, Cau Giay, Bac Tu Liem, Nam Tu Liem, Ha Dong are also "hot" areas in terms of the number of students because there are many new urban areas.

Speaking to Kinh te & Do thi Newspaper, Dr. Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem, Vice President of the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association, said that in the general planning, zoning and detailed planning of Hanoi, there are calculations to ensure enough schools. However, in recent times, there have been some problems, including the lack of schools in the inner city area, which has made many parents upset.

“We lack specific investigation and supervision of urban areas that have land but do not build schools, or even do not clear the land. There must be sanctions and decentralization of authority to monitor, inspect, and handle this matter,” said the Vice President of the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association.

According to statistics from the Hanoi People's Committee, the city currently has more than 120 universities and colleges of ministries and sectors, with more than one million students living and studying; most concentrated in Cau Giay, Dong Da, Thanh Xuan, and Hai Ba Trung districts. The policy of relocating production and medical facilities with high levels of pollution, universities, colleges, headquarters of agencies and large enterprises outside the inner city to prioritize a part of the land fund for building public schools has been stipulated in Decision 130/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister, but the implementation results are not as planned.

National Assembly Delegate Hoang Van Cuong (Hanoi Delegation) pointed out the reality: some agencies have moved their headquarters out of the inner city, but there is a situation where some agencies have a part in the new facility, while others are still in the old facility, and it is not possible to move all the agencies that need to be relocated.

On the other hand, after Ha Tay merged into Hanoi, in 2009, the Prime Minister approved the task of Planning the construction of a system of universities and colleges in the Hanoi Capital Region until 2025, with a vision to 2050. One of the goals of the planning is to reduce student density and the number of schools in the urban center. The Ministry of Construction was assigned to preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Education and Training to develop a plan and propose directions for relocating a number of training facilities in the inner city. 12 universities and colleges were proposed to be relocated, including the universities of Hanoi Law, Foreign Trade, Trade Union, Construction, Open Hanoi...; however, after 15 years, most of the above universities still remain in the inner city. These things always make Hanoi face difficulties in land funds, leading to difficulties in building and developing a school network system.

On August 16, 2024, reporting on the investment and activities in the cultural and social fields in Hanoi, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment Le Trung Hieu added a direct cause leading to the shortage of schools in the inner city, which is that some wards are located in flood escape corridors, and the construction, repair and renovation of schools face many difficulties due to the Law on Dykes. For example, Phuc Xa Secondary School, Ba Dinh District, after many surveys, teachers, students and parents were happy because they thought they were about to start building a new school, but then, many classes of students have grown up and moved to other levels of education, while the school remains the same. The degraded facilities are not only difficult to meet the standards required by the new program, hindering the school's enrollment work, but also directly affecting the quality of training as well as fairness in education.

The slow implementation of school construction in residential areas, urban areas, and new urban areas is also the cause of the shortage of schools in Hanoi. Home to dozens of apartment buildings with a height of 34-35 floors, Vinhomes Smart City ( Tay Mo ward, Nam Tu Liem district) is known as a metropolis - "Smart City" of Hanoi and Vietnam. When the apartment buildings were opened for sale and put into operation, the mechanical population growth rate in Tay Mo ward increased to 70,000 people.

According to information from Nam Tu Liem district, in the entire Tay Mo ward before the 2023-2024 school year, there were only two public primary schools, Tay Mo and Ly Nam De. In the 2023-2024 school year, Ly Nam De Primary School had nearly 1,500 students, Tay Mo Primary School had 46 classes with 2,472 students. To reduce the burden on Tay Mo Primary School, Nam Tu Liem district has developed a project to split this school into two schools, Tay Mo Primary School and Tay Mo 3 Primary School. However, due to the rapid growth of the mechanical population, adding a new school with more than 1,000 students still cannot meet the demand for learning places, leading to the incident at Tay Mo 3 Primary School that recently caused a stir in public opinion.

In Hoang Mai district, there are 19 urban areas with 68 school planning plots, but most of the school planning plots have not been invested in and built on schedule. As of July 2023, Hoang Mai district has 38 off-budget projects that are slow to be implemented because many investors owe large tax debts and have been slow to fulfill their financial obligations for many years; many investors do not focus on investing in social infrastructure such as schools, trees, parking lots, etc., causing social infrastructure overload in the area.

In an explanatory report sent by the Hanoi Department of Education and Training to the City People's Committee in 2020, there were nearly 20 urban and housing projects that had not built schools according to the plan to ensure synchronization with population development, these were projects in a number of districts: Nam Tu Liem, Bac Tu Liem, Hoang Mai, Ha Dong, Hoai Duc, Thanh Oai, Thanh Tri...

Many architects believe that Hanoi must take strong measures to deal with the situation where investors do not build schools when implementing projects. If investors do not want to build or intentionally do not build schools in the project, they must pay back an equivalent amount of money to buy a space with enough space for the number of students in the residential area where the project will be formed. What needs to be emphasized here is that the government must require the construction of public educational facilities, not the construction of private schools and then collect sky-high tuition fees.

To contribute to solving the problem of lack of schools in Hanoi, Dr. Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem, Vice President of the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association, said that Hanoi must resolutely and quickly relocate the headquarters of a number of ministries, enterprises, universities, etc. out of the inner city according to Decision 130/QD-TTg in 2015 of the Prime Minister to take part of the land fund to build public schools. Recently, this task was reiterated and emphasized in the Capital Law 2024.

Along with that, according to Dr. Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem, Hanoi needs to strengthen population management and forecasting, especially the rate of mechanical population growth; in other words, it is necessary to have a more reasonable way of population management to be proactive in planning the school network.

(To be continued)

11:45 August 30, 2024

Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/bai-2-nguyen-nhan-khong-chi-boi-dat-chat-nguoi-dong.html