Deploying the Happy School Criteria to Schools

Delegates give comments on the draft of the Temporary Criteria for Happy Schools.

At the Workshop, delegates emphasized the meaning and clarified the concept of “Happy School”. According to experts, “Happy School” is not a new concept but has been established for many years. However, in the new context, building schools that meet the requirements of Happy School is becoming more urgent.

Teachers must be people who can inspire and motivate students to learn.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Xuan Yen, Deputy Head of the Faculty of PrimaryEducation , Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, emphasized that building Happy Schools is one of the key activities of the Education sector since the 2018-2019 school year. “This is a necessary policy in the context of the whole country implementing the 2018 General Education Program, while being greatly influenced by the 4th industrial revolution. Never before has the education sector faced such high supervision and demands from society,” Ms. Yen expressed.

According to this expert, that reality shows that the requirement to improve and develop professional capacity for teachers is one of the important tasks to build the model of "Happy School". Besides teaching capacity, teachers need to have the capacity to manage social behavior and take care of students' mental health. Teachers need to become wise advisors to help students develop comprehensively; know how to inspire students' motivation to learn in a new context with different abilities, levels, learning styles, different living conditions, and different types of intelligence... Building a Happy School ultimately must start with teachers, in which developing professional capacity is very important, so building a set of criteria and standards to identify Happy Schools in Ho Chi Minh City certainly needs to pay attention to criteria on professional capacity.

According to experts, in order to have happy students, teachers must first be happy. Teachers are the ones who design educational experiences for students. Therefore, if teachers are not happy, students will surely have to "suffer" from dry, formal, and ineffective educational activities.

In today’s world, teachers are facing immense pressure from many sides. They are not only responsible for imparting knowledge to students, but also have to meet the requirements of the curriculum, manage the classroom, and interact with parents and the community. The stress, pressure of work, and strict requirements can negatively affect their psychology and health. Therefore, caring for the mental health and happiness of teachers is not only their personal responsibility, but also an important factor when building a happy and sustainable education system.

Dr. Pham Thi Thuy, Deputy Head of the Faculty of Socio-Economic Management, National Academy of Public Administration, Ho Chi Minh City Branch, said that the central object of the school is the student. However, to make the student happy, the object that needs attention is the teacher.

“Building a happy school is always the dream of every person who is passionate about education. This is also the goal and core task that the education sector is setting out, requiring school leaders, teachers, students, and parents to strive to create it for their own happiness in particular and the happiness of society in general. A happy school is not a difficult model to achieve, because happiness is first of all an emotion, a relationship between people with love, safety, and respect for each other. Happiness comes from within each of us, in our attitudes and behaviors, not from/does not depend on external factors such as money or facilities. We can change step by step from small things, feasible in the conditions of each school, each teacher,” said Dr. Thuy.

Experts say that a happy school is a place where both students and teachers feel that "Every day at school is a happy day."

Need to be implemented in depth and widely

Delegates agreed that schools influence student happiness and vice versa, student happiness is also the goal of schools. There are many definitions of Happy Schools, but in general, experts agree to describe Happy Schools as places where students are given the conditions to develop their personal potential, develop life and learning skills, and feel confident and love the learning process. This should be an environment where bullying and school violence are rare, making friends is relatively easy, and establishing sincere and respectful relationships with stakeholders.

Mr. Nguyen Huu Tin, Deputy Head of the Department of Child Care and Gender Equality, Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs of Ho Chi Minh City, stated that through practical work, the rate of students violating the law is increasing. The question is whether high schools have taught students enough? Are schools teaching students to "be famous" before they "become adults" when the opposite should be true?

In addition, inner-city schools have different conditions than suburban schools. If implementing the same set of criteria, there needs to be an open direction for schools to proactively implement them in accordance with the actual conditions at the unit.

“Every day at school is a happy day” is a common slogan in schools across the country. We all want students to go to school with joy and happiness. However, happiness and mental health of students are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve in today's learning and social environment. This is due to the changing challenges in the teaching and learning process, some inequalities that still exist, as well as the pressure on grades that has not decreased. These have led to the burden on education over the past years,” a lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City) confided.

Ms. Tran Hai Yen, Deputy Head of the Culture - Society Committee, Ho Chi Minh City People's Council, said that currently there are many criteria and contents for building the "Happy School" model, but the education sector needs to determine which is important, which should be done first and which should be done later.

Mr. Duong Tri Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City, said that building a Happy School is a practical task that needs to be implemented in depth and has a widespread impact. In particular, the set of criteria is the basis for schools to organize implementation according to the actual situation at the unit. In the immediate future, the education sector will select a number of units to pilot the implementation to summarize, draw experience, and evaluate the changes of the school when implementing before expanding it throughout the city.

According to the draft (2nd time) of the Temporary Criteria for Happy Schools in educational institutions in Ho Chi Minh City, there are three groups of criteria for evaluation. Specifically, criterion 1 is School environment (standard facilities; green-clean-beautiful-safe school; building and implementing a good code of conduct in schools; ensuring the health and physical and mental health of students, staff, teachers, employees; promoting teachers' capacity and skills...), criterion 2 is Teaching and educational activities , criterion 3 is Relationships inside and outside the school.

After completing the Criteria Set, the Department of Education and Training set the target: In the 2023-2024 school year, 100% of the Departments of Education and Training will launch a movement to build Happy Schools and 100% of schools will implement a plan to build Happy Schools. Each city, district, and county will have 1 educational institution at each level implementing the Happy School pilot model. By the 2024-2025 school year, 100% of educational institutions will continue to effectively and substantially implement the construction of Happy Schools.

THUY TRANG

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