Circular 29/2024, which was recently issued by MOET, clearly stipulates that extra teaching are not allowed in three different situations. 

First, private tutoring for primary school students is not allowed, except for training in arts, sports and life skills. Second, teachers at schools are not allowed to teach extra classes to their students at the same schools for money. Third, teachers at public schools must not participate in managing and operating extra teaching, but they can give extra lessons outside the school.

Commenting about the new regulation, headmasters at some schools said despite the strict requirements in the new circular, it would not be easy to control extra teaching outside school.

Ho Tuan Anh, headmaster at Quynh Phuong Secondary School, said the new regulation requires school headmasters to take responsibility for "keeping management and cooperating with appropriate units to conduct supervision when teachers give private tutoring outside school".

He said he is unsure how he could control extra teaching if he doesn’t have the right to grant licenses and inspect extra classes, but can only "cooperate"with appropriate units.

“So, I understand that headmasters just have the right to propagate the new regulation, and ask teachers to commit to observe the regulation. Only when appropriate agencies inspect and discover violations will headmasters be able to handle the cases,” he said.

Anh said that controlling extra teaching is not an easy task.

For many years, when private tutoring was covered by Circular 17 (which will be replaced by Circular 29, effective from mid-February), no violations of private tutoring have been reported, even though private tutoring is rampant.

This is attributed to two factors. First, headmasters don’t have the right to inspect teachers’ private tutoring outside school, and they can only "cooperate with competent agencies to take inspection tours when necessary".

Second, no master wants to see their teachers violating the law. The headmaster of a famous secondary school in Hanoi, on one hand, said that it is necessary to keep strict control over extra teaching to prevent coercive extra learning, but, on the other hand, private tutoring on a voluntary basis should not be banned.

She said that private tutoring demand is real. “Weak students want extra lessons to improve their learning results. Good students also want to attend extra classes to expand their knowledge. And these demands are really bigger than we think,” she said.

“It is a legitimate aspiration to have extra lessons to prepare for exams to enter schools for the gifted, or to university,” she continued.

Therefore, regulations need to be strict enough to prevent the teachers from forcing their students at school to attend their extra classes, and flexible enough to facilitate legitimate private tutoring.

Asked about the role of school headmasters in implementing the newly released legal document, she said she has disseminated Circular 29 to all teachers at the school. However, under the circular, headmasters lack sufficient power to control extra teaching.

“We can only disseminate the circular and update new regulations set by MOET, as well as organize political and ideological education sessions for teachers. Headmasters don’t have the authority to monitor, inspect, or control. Previously, teachers who wanted to teach extra classes outside school had to get permission from headmasters, but now they only need to report. This also makes it more difficult to control teachers," she said.

To control extra teaching, Nguyen Nhu Tung, deputy head of Ba Dinh district’s education and training sub-department, said the district is drafting a plan to establish an interdisciplinary team, consisting of district police and ward representatives, to take inspection tours to centers that have registered to organize private tutoring and facilities rented to serve private tutoring in order to discover violations.

Inspections will also be carried out if the agency receives complaints and reports about violations from parents and the public.

Controlling extra teaching was a focus of the district’s education sub-department last year. Teachers were asked to commit to not provide illegal extra teaching, and only organize extra classes with permission from school headmasters.

Thanh Hung