The Ministry of Education and Training has just requested educational institutions to cut unnecessary exams, records, books, meetings and intermediate reports.
The goal is to reduce administrative pressure, spend more time on teaching, professional activities and limit achievement disease.
This is an important requirement before the new school year, aiming to give teachers time to do the core work of a teacher, which is preparing lessons, standing in class, monitoring progress and supporting students.
To have a quality lesson, teachers must invest a lot of effort outside of class hours. Those tasks are difficult to do well if time is divided by records, reports, meetings and movements.
The reality of many years in schools shows that teachers still have to prepare main records to serve inspection, report existing data or maintain both paper and electronic versions. Many meetings are prolonged even though the content can be conveyed by a short notice.
Contests can also become a burden if organized densely and associated with emulation. Student playgrounds can easily turn into achievement races; excellent teacher contests can lead to performance-oriented lessons and a series of records and evidence.
Therefore, do not organize excellent student exams at school and commune levels if not for the purpose of selecting teams; do not organize excellent teacher contests for achievements; do not turn English, STEM, arts, and sports activities into exams. These are very necessary things.
Notably, the Ministry of Education and Training requires educational institutions not to self-place additional forms, reports, and unnecessary evidence; not to request reporting information already available on the common database.
Schools are also not required to simultaneously implement paper records and electronic records with the same content, unless prescribed by law.
Of course, whether the Ministry of Education and Training's requirements "go into life" or not, the most important thing is still the implementation stage, how to prevent the situation of "top hot, bottom cold".
To make this requirement effective, the reduction needs to be implemented uniformly from educational management agencies to each school. Units need to review all records, reports, meetings and ongoing movements; remove overlapping, unnecessary or not directly serving teaching activities content.
The application of technology must also really help teachers reduce workload, rather than creating additional procedures besides paper records in the style of putting paper records on a computer and then asking teachers to save both copies.
At the same time, it is necessary to clearly stipulate the responsibility of the head in controlling administrative requirements, ensuring that the policy of reducing pressure on teachers creates specific changes in each school.
In particular, the Education sector also needs to have a channel to receive feedback on unreasonable requests and have strict measures to handle individuals and organizations that do not comply with directives.
Returning meaningful teaching time to teachers is creating more conditions to improve the quality of education.
