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| Kids join a reading session at a private kindergarten in Da Nang city. The beach city will provide free schooling for all students from kindergarten to high school in 2023-24. (Photo courtesy of Phuong Chi) |
The decision was ratified at the council's working session earlier this week, making it the only city in Vietnam to offer free education for all students this year.
It’s the third year the central city has applied subsidies to fund education, with the goal being to ease the financial burden caused by COVID-19 in 2020-2022.
The city’s People’s Council said free education would apply to all state-owned and private schools in the city, but not to foreign-invested ones.
Each student had to pay a monthly school fee from 50,000 to 300,000 VND in previous years, but they will be offered a nine-month term free for the 2023-2024 school year.
The city's budget will provide 316 billion VND for state-owned schools and 92 billion VND for private schools.
The central city was also the first in Vietnam to hold a pilot project on caring for babies from six to 18 months at 21 public kindergartens as preparation for the city’s social-security master plan for 2020-2025.
A number of foreign-invested kindergartens are operating in the city providing services for expats and those looking for international curriculums.
The city, in cooperation with the American Half the Sky Foundation, opened the One Sky kindergarten at the Hoa Khanh Industrial Zone, the first care centre and kindergarten for children aged from six months to six years.
The Japanese JP Holdings Group also operated the Japanese-led COHAS Da Nang, or Smile School, for children ages one to six, while Leave a Nest, an education organisation from Japan, with the Self Wing Vietnam Company, launched a project on nature research and education for students at secondary schools in the city.
At the meeting, Da Nang authorities also proposed a fund of 670 billion VND to upgrade the March 29 Park, which has long been polluted, in 2023-2026.
The park will be designed as a core green zone in the plan for a smart city by 2030./.