Ho Chi Minh City is seeking opinions on the draft Resolution of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council stipulating the level of support for swimming learning costs and transportation costs to serve the organization of safe swimming teaching for students.
According to the draft, students who do not meet the requirements for safe swimming skills and need to participate in the course will be supported with a maximum of 700,000 VND/person/course. For schools that do not have the conditions to organize swimming lessons at their units, the city will additionally support the cost of centralized transportation to pick up and drop off students.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, the whole city currently has more than 2.1 million students, of which more than 1.2 million students do not know how to swim, accounting for 58.45%. Meanwhile, only 182/1,651 educational institutions have swimming pools, equivalent to about 11%, causing most schools to link with external units to organize swimming lessons.
Assessing the proposal to support swimming lessons for students, Mr. Dinh Phu Cuong - Principal of Nguyen Van Luong Secondary School - said that this is a necessary policy in the context that the number of students who do not know how to swim is still large.
According to Mr. Cuong, currently only about 1/3 of the school's students know how to swim. Although students are equipped with knowledge of drowning prevention through educational activities, the number of students participating in formal swimming courses is still limited.
Regarding the support level of 700,000 VND/student, Mr. Cuong assessed it as appropriate. Previously, school students paid about 100,000 VND/month to learn to swim for about a semester, so this support level basically meets the cost of a course.
However, according to Mr. Cuong, for policies to become reality, the organization of implementation needs to be designed in a simple and convenient direction for schools.
I hope the disbursement will be as streamlined as possible. If the school has to carry out too many administrative procedures, the implementation will be difficult," Mr. Cuong shared.
According to him, when deploying on a city-wide scale with more than 1.2 million students who do not know how to swim, there needs to be coordination between the education sector and local authorities in exploiting the public swimming pool system, cultural and sports centers and service facilities.
It is not possible to send all students to school at the same time because the swimming pool will not meet the needs. Schools need to have reasonable school schedules for each area," he said.
Sharing the same view, Mr. Le Hong Thai - Principal of Phan Van Tri Primary School - said that the city's proposal to support funding to organize swimming lessons is a necessary policy, because swimming is not only a sport but also an important life skill for students.
If implemented, many students will have more opportunities to access safe swimming skills, contributing to preventing and combating drowning. This is also a humane policy when reducing the cost burden for parents," Mr. Thai said.
According to Mr. Thai, to make the policy effective when implemented throughout the city, localities need to proactively divide schools into clusters, maximize the existing swimming pool system and build appropriate school schedules to avoid overload. In addition, it is possible to flexibly organize centralized pick-up and drop-off or for parents to proactively take their children to swimming learning locations depending on actual conditions.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, the issuance of policies to support swimming learning costs and transportation costs is necessary to create conditions for more students to access safe swimming skills, contributing to preventing and combating drowning accidents. At the same time, this is also a solution to gradually increase the rate of students who know how to swim, especially in schools without swimming pools and areas with limited conditions for organizing swimming lessons.
