Viet Nam achieved Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 2000 with the help of an expanded multigrade teaching system in primary schools. Since then the government has focused on the quality of primary education. What lessons can be learned from a project aimed at improving the quality of health education at multigrade schools?

Viet Nam has large areas of mountainous highlands with many isolated communities of ethnic minority groups. While compulsory primary schooling reached UPE, a 70 percent enrolment, educational efficiency (at 70 percent) is not high. The government launched the National Primary Curriculum in 2000 to try to improve the quality of education. The curriculum includes health education, which aims to teach basic knowledge about health, nutrition and the environment. In 1991 the Ministry of Education and Training and UNICEF launched the Multigrade Teaching Project, setting up a network of multigrade classes in remote areas.

A study by the London Institute of Education in the UK and Hanoi University of Education in Viet Nam aims to improve understanding of how health education is being taught in multigrade classes in northern Viet Nam, and to help develop a more effective approach for teaching. It finds that teachers generally teach a subject that requires intense teacher input (such as maths) to one grade group, while the other grade groups carry on with subjects needing only light teacher input. For most subjects, teachers teach each grade separately yet at the same time, spending about five minutes with a grade group before moving to the next group. Teaching is strongly teacher led and controlled and involves passive learning.

Based on these observations, the researchers then set up an action research project in partnership with multigrade teachers in Bacgiang Province to encourage an immediate improvement in their practice. This involves the teachers using an enquiry-based approach to learning and teaching a variety of student groupings, starting with the whole class and then breaking into small groups within grades or mixed-grade groups. They aim to encourage active and collaborative learning.

The following findings are reported:

• A ‘before’ and ‘after’ knowledge test shows the new teaching approach is more effective in terms of knowledge gained by the students compared with those in the control group.
• Teachers report that the pupils enjoy working on tasks collaboratively in groups and this stimulates them to share ideas and boosts confidence and feelings of self-worth.
• Teachers find the new method helps them to manage multigrade classes more easily.

The study demonstrates that action research can be successfully used to help multigrade teachers improve the quality of health education teaching and learning in remote, disadvantaged areas of Viet Nam. This has a number of implications for more effective teacher training:

• The Ministry of Education and Training acknowledges the need for multigrade teachers to be given more flexibility in teaching the curriculum but it needs to actively raise awareness of this policy and sensitise teachers and education officers to the degree of flexibility allowed.
• Curriculum developers need to work with teachers to make multigrade teaching easier by presenting the curriculum in a more user-friendly format, by improving training and teacher support, and by producing more interactive and flexible learning materials.

Source(s):
‘Improving the Quality of Health Education in Multigrade Schools in Viet Nam’, by T. Son Vu and Pat Pridmore, in ‘Education for All and Multigrade Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities’, pages 155-168, Springer: Dordrecht, edited by Angela Little, 2006 Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development and The British Council

id21 Research Highlight: 21 May 2007

Further Information:
Pat Pridmore
Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)20 7612 6601
Fax: +44 (0)20 7612 6632
Contact the contributor: p.pridmore@ioe.ac.uk

Institute of Education, University of London, UK

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Learning and Teaching in Multigrade Settings, research project

'Making the grade? Reading progress in multigrade schools'

'Out of sight, out of mind? Multigrade teaching in Nepal'

'Multi-grade teaching: facing the hidden reality of education's have-nots'

'Teaching large classes in Uganda'