No pressure, towards comprehensive development for students
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has issued Official Letter No. 4567/BGDDT-GDPT guiding the organization of 2 teaching sessions/day for general education.
Accordingly, teaching time is flexibly deployed at each level of education. For primary schools, teaching is carried out in 2 sessions/day, each day is arranged with no more than 7 lessons (35 minutes per lesson), with a minimum of 9 sessions/week (equivalent to 32 lessons/week).
The Ministry clearly defined that the first session will organize teaching of general education programs; the second session will organize consolidation activities to help students complete their learning content and comprehensively develop virtue - intelligence - body - aesthetics.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the issuance of documents guiding the organization of teaching and learning in 2 sessions/day aims to improve the quality of comprehensive educational activities; the quality of regular school hours; overcome the situation of extra teaching and learning that is not in accordance with regulations; build a healthy and safe educational environment, ensuring fairness in access to education.
The Ministry of Education and Training also emphasized that the implementation must ensure: No pressure on students, teachers, and parents. Implement the socialization of education in accordance with legal regulations, voluntarily - publicly - transparently.
Many provinces and cities have also had plans to organize teaching and learning 2 sessions/day from the 2025 - 2026 school year.
In Bac Giang province, there are currently 759 educational institutions, however, teaching 2 sessions/day has only been implemented at the preschool and primary levels, not implemented in secondary education and continuing education due to difficulties due to inadequate facilities and teaching equipment, local surplus and shortage of teachers, and financial resources.
Therefore, the implementation of teaching 2 sessions/day will be applied in 100% of secondary schools from the 2025-2026 school year, while investing in facilities, teaching equipment and teaching staff to ensure efficiency.
In Vinh Long province, to organize 2 teaching sessions/day for general education in the 2025-2026 school year, the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee assigned the Department of Education and Training to preside over and coordinate with relevant units to advise and implement in accordance with authority, ensuring quality and efficiency, creating a healthy and fair learning environment for students in the whole province.
Proposal to make teaching 2 sessions/day effective
Mr. Nguyen Van Luc, former teacher of Trinh Phong Secondary School, Khanh Hoa, supports the policy of teaching 2 sessions/day. However, to put teaching into a disciplined system and truly effective, Mr. Luc suggested reviewing the facilities and ensuring enough teachers.
"In the context of expanding administrative boundary mergers, the number of students has increased. In the immediate future, communes can take advantage of the renovation to arrange surplus agencies after the merger into classrooms for teaching to avoid wasting facilities" - Mr. Luc said.
According to Mr. Luc, teaching 2 sessions/day in previous school years has been implemented by some secondary schools, but most of the second sessions are organized to teach some additional subjects of English Math and Literature as the main subjects and have fees. Therefore, the teaching of the second session of the 2025-2026 school year needs to be strictly implemented according to the instructions of the Ministry of Education and Training.
"I recommend that principals seriously implement and supervise to avoid turning the second session into an extra teaching session - extra learning with fee collection that had occurred before Circular No. 29/2024/TT-BGDDT was issued - Mr. Luc said.
Regarding the budget for implementing two sessions/day, in addition to the state budget, it is necessary to promote socialization, encourage and create conditions for organizations and individuals to contribute and invest resources in education according to the law.
"Absolutely do not use socialized funding to pay for teaching two sessions/day because otherwise it will lead to variation in teaching a second session as an extra-curricular session with student fees" - Mr. Luc emphasized.
In addition to the above contents, this teacher proposed that the Ministry of Education and Training regulate the unification of students having a day off on Saturdays, in order to promote the initiative and creativity of schools in developing and implementing a 2-session/day education plan.
At the same time, principals need to propagate and disseminate to teachers so that each teacher, student and parent needs to determine their mindset, responsibility and motivation so that teaching and learning 2 sessions/day can be truly effective.
