Fearing being bullied by teachers, parents frantically register their children for extra classes.

Parents feel secure when sending their children to the homeroom teacher's house for extra classes. (Illustration: TN)

"My children study at home mainly, studying in class is secondary", this idea was drawn by Ms. Phan Thi Thuy (42 years old, Luong Son, Hoa Binh) after many years of accompanying her two children in grades 5 and 12.

Extra study is main study

When her youngest son was in 3rd grade, Ms. Thuy thought that her son only needed to learn the core knowledge in class. In fact, her son's final exam results kept decreasing. In 1st grade, he was an excellent student, in 2nd grade, he was a good student, and in 3rd grade, he was almost an average student.

"At the year-end parent meeting, the head teacher shared that if the family did not provide extra tutoring, the child would lose his foundation and would be weaker than his classmates as he progressed through the grades. I started to panic and decided to go to the head teacher's house to ask for my child to take extra classes on weekday evenings," said Ms. Thuy. Since then, her child has been taking extra classes at the head teacher's house four times a week.

Thuy and her husband run a construction materials business. Their jobs are busy, and their knowledge is different now than before, so they pay little attention to teaching their children. Thuy relies almost entirely on teachers for their children's education.

Each lesson costs 150,000 VND, and each month the family spends about 2.5 million VND for their child to take extra classes. "Since my child started taking extra classes, his test scores have also improved. I don't know if it's because the teacher favors him or if he has really improved, but whenever his scores are high, I'm happy," said the parent.

She calmly ignored the regulation prohibiting homeroom teachers from giving extra lessons to their own students. "Parents voluntarily register their children to study here, as long as their children have knowledge and achieve good results, that's fine. Banning teachers from teaching at home but allowing them to teach at school is no different. Wherever the teaching is good, we let our children study," she said.

Studying extra to ''avoid being noticed by the teacher''

This year, Ms. Hoang Thi Suy's child (37 years old, Dong Da, Hanoi) entered 6th grade. Right from the first parent meeting of the year, a parent whispered to her to register her child for an extra math class at the homeroom teacher's house.

I remember clearly the first time I brought my child to her house, the room was about 40 square meters with 18 desks divided into 2 rows. Each desk had 4 students. The class was as crowded as a regular class. Each class was not cheap, 150,000 - 200,000 VND/2 hour session, but I don't understand why parents still rushed to register their children to study.

"Later I learned that sending my child to extra classes at the teacher's house was mainly to 'create relationships'. Students who came to the teacher's house to study were given more preferential treatment than those who didn't. More importantly, parents didn't have to worry about being scrutinized or bullied by the teacher," said Ms. Suy.

Currently, her son attends 3 extra classes. Math class is on Monday and Wednesday, Literature class is on Tuesday and Friday, and English class is on Thursday and Saturday. These tutors are all his subject teachers, so she is somewhat assured and does not worry about his learning results. This parent also no longer has the habit of checking homework and test scores. She believes that her son will be favored and cared more about his grades and quality if he takes extra classes at the teacher's house.

Mr. Tran Van Hoang (35 years old, Viet Tri, Phu Tho) also has the same mentality as the parents mentioned above. He sends his 3rd grade daughter to the homeroom teacher's house for extra classes every evening of the week. "Instead of studying at home in the evening, the family sends their child to the teacher for extra tutoring, both ensuring the quality and receiving the teacher's favor," he said.

At first, he did not pay attention to his child's extra classes, thinking that studying in class was enough. Gradually, when he saw parents in the class rushing to send their children to the teacher's house to study, he and his wife became a bit impatient, "What if if they don't go to the teacher's house to study, they will be bullied?"

Following the crowd mentality, he sent his child to her house for extra classes every day, at a cost of 120,000 VND/session.

Mr. Nguyen Van Hoa, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nguyen Binh Khiem High-Quality School System, said that the cases of overcharging and extra tutoring mostly occur in public schools, rarely in private schools. He himself opposes the abuse of tricks to force students to take extra classes. This is a deviant behavior, against the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, and against the ethics of teachers.

The mechanism of private schools is as a service provider, parents and students who are not satisfied with the teaching can completely stop the service. But public schools are different, "extra teaching and learning are not based on the spirit of voluntariness but using tricks that will destroy the image of teachers in the eyes of students", said Mr. Hoa.

According to VTC