"I hope the family will take care of and monitor their child more closely. He is not focused and his academic performance is at the bottom of the class," Ms. Tran Phuong Thao (39 years old, Tuong Mai, Hanoi) eagerly showed her husband the text message from the homeroom teacher evaluating his child's academic performance.

The new school year has just started, and for three consecutive weeks, Ms. Thao has received such comments from her son's teacher. Minh is in 2nd grade this year, is an intelligent, talkative and sociable child, but his academic performance has always been rated low by his teacher.

A parent whose child was in Minh's class whispered to Ms. Thao to send her child to the teacher's house for extra classes every night, and her child would naturally improve. To convince her more, she took a picture of her son's academic results and sent it to her. In the first semester of first grade, her child was assessed by the teacher as having good academic performance, but slow in understanding. After sending her child to the teacher's house, in the second semester, the student's academic performance naturally improved, and he became an excellent student.

Ms. Thao discussed with her husband to decide to let her tutor her child at home on weeknights.

As soon as the issue was raised, the homeroom teacher of her son added Ms. Thao to the Zalo group to announce the extra class schedule. "I was surprised because 2/3 of the group members were parents of my child's class, it seemed like another world," the female parent said. The extra class at the homeroom teacher's house has been maintained since first grade.

The extra class takes place 4 times a week, divided equally into 2 subjects: Math and Vietnamese, with a tuition fee of 120,000 VND/time, with a total of 36 students. She also announced that as the midterm and final exams approach, the number of times will increase to 6 times a week to train students to achieve the best results and see clear progress.

"After registering my child for the course, both my husband and I were amazed at the average income of the teacher - nearly 70 million VND per month - 3 times the total income of my whole family combined," Ms. Thao shared. As for Minh, each month the family invests nearly 2 million VND for extra classes, which is 20 million VND for a year of 10 months.

This female parent is somewhat concerned because both husband and wife's salaries are not high, now they have to shoulder the burden of having two children take extra classes, the economy which is not very abundant now has to be tightened even more. She also encourages her husband to try to work overtime, ensuring that the children attend extra classes at her house every evening. "It's better to spend a little money on extra classes than to be criticized by the teacher and have to sing the song of poor study every day," she said.

Should I send my child to extra classes?

Tran Van Thuy (41 years old, Dong Da district, Hanoi) has been taking extra classes with his homeroom teacher since his child was in 3rd grade. Now his child is in 5th grade. He calculated that when his child was in 3rd grade, the tuition was 100,000 VND/session, 3 sessions/week. When he was in 4th grade, the teacher used the excuse of rising prices and inflation to increase the tuition to 130,000 VND/session, 3 sessions/week.

The climax was this year, at the beginning of the school year, she texted parents to register for extra Math and English classes at her house and she would invite teachers from the school to teach. At the same time, the tuition fee increased to 180,000 VND/session. The children had 6 classes a week because in the final year of high school, there was more time to review and provide students with enough knowledge to be able to get into top schools.

Mr. Thuy and his wife opened a grocery stall at the market, selling goods slowly every day. "On busy days, we earn a few hundred thousand, on quiet days, we are happy to have enough money to feed the family. Up to now, the tuition fee for our children has skyrocketed to 180,000 VND/session, on average, we spend more than 4.3 million VND/month for our youngest daughter, a huge burden for the family," he said.

Many times, Mr. Thuy discussed with his wife whether to stop sending their child to the head teacher's house to save money. But they still decided to let their child go to school, because they were assured of the knowledge, the head teacher favored them, had a good academic record, and also hoped that their child could get into a better secondary school.

In first and second grade, my child was at the bottom of the class, with only 7-8 points in Math and Vietnamese tests. However, since sending my child to her home to study, none of his tests were below 9 points, his report card was sparkling with all 10s, and comments about being a good student made me even more proud.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Hue, a psychologist at Hanoi National University of Education, shared that she has witnessed many parents complaining about their children’s extra classes. Everyone believes that extra classes mainly come from the teachers’ requests. These teachers “hit” the psychology of the parents when they say that their children are weak learners, have difficulty catching up with their friends, and will lose “momentum” when entering secondary school.

Meanwhile, many teachers argue that extra classes are due to parents' needs. Parents themselves do not want their children to be inferior to their friends, so they ask teachers to help. Where there is demand, there will be supply, which is inevitable.

The "war" of right and wrong in extra teaching and learning will probably never end. Disadvantages will always fall on the children who do not have any time to live a true childhood.

"To be fair, there are students who do not need extra classes but still pass the exam with high scores. However, that number is very small and in fact those are students who have awareness, the ability to self-study, and have been carefully taught and trained since childhood. The majority of the rest have to take extra classes and practice really hard to hope to pass the top secondary and high school exams..." , Dr. Hue said.

Ms. Tran Thu Loan (a Literature teacher in Ba Dinh, Hanoi) believes that sending children to extra classes too often can easily make them dependent, lazy to think, and rely on teachers for tutoring and revision... Besides, primary school students are at the age of both intellectual and physical development, their ability to concentrate is still low, although the main activity has shifted from playing to studying, but it is still mainly the form of both studying and playing.

On the other hand, forcing children to study too much will make them fall into a state of stress, excessive fatigue, causing mental inhibition, making them afraid of studying and even more lazy to study. When forced, children will learn mechanically and passively. Because they do not have love and passion, they think against it, considering studying as a difficult task. That is what limits children's creativity and thinking development.

Therefore, the advice for parents is to stop being afraid that their children will not be as good as their friends, afraid that they will be bullied by their teachers... and then forcing them to take extra classes. It is not known whether extra classes will bring real benefits or not, but it is known that there are children who are scared and trembling just by hearing the word "study", Ms. Loan advised.

Tuition fees are the biggest expense.

In 2022, the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences and UNESCO analyzed the overall education sector in Vietnam from 2011 to 2020, showing that the cost of extra classes is the largest part of the current education costs for families of high school students. Specifically, the cost of extra classes for primary school is 32%, for secondary school is 42% and for high school is 43% of the total education costs.

Ha Cuong