The rate of children of preschool age attending nursery school is still very low.

Preschool students of Chau Thanh district.

The statistics below show that:

Content	2021	2022	2023	2024
Nursery	12.3%	18.7%	16.6%	18.4%
Kindergarten	67.9%	77.4%	78.1%	82%
5 year old kindergarten	98.5%	99.7%	99.6%	99.8%

The leaders of the Departmentof Education and Training (DoET) acknowledged that preschool education has made significant progress in recent years, especially at the 5-year-old kindergarten level. The rate of students attending preschool levels, especially kindergarten classes, is on the rise, reflecting improved public awareness and the efforts of the education sector in developing the preschool system.

However, the rate of children attending kindergarten is still limited, and comprehensive solutions are needed to encourage parents to let their children participate in preschool education early, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to learn and develop from an early age.

Regarding the quality of preschool care and education, every year, the Department of Education and Training has documents guiding preschool education tasks, in which special attention is paid to guiding the work of child care and education to ensure quality.

Every year, the Department of Education and Training develops plans and organizes inspection and examination teams to monitor the implementation of child care and education at preschools.

The inspection content focuses on the implementation of preschool education programs, ensuring food safety and hygiene, preventing accidents and injuries, boarding work, material conditions, staff and implementation of policies for children and preschool teachers.

Preschools strictly implement school health work such as health management and care, health education propaganda, and prevention and control of infectious diseases.

100% of preschools and boarding schools use nutrition software to establish nutrients, create menus, and ensure proper nutrition for children. Children's meals are strictly managed in terms of quality, meeting food safety requirements, ensuring balanced and diverse foods.

The number of meals meets the recommended needs, the distribution of meals is appropriate for each age and nutritional status of children, and the time for organizing meals for children is carried out according to the daily schedule, ensuring compliance with the regulations in the Preschool Education Program.

However, the Department of Education and Training assessed that the quality of implementing the preschool education program in most private preschools, kindergartens and independent groups and classes has not been highly effective. One of the main reasons is that the teacher/class arrangement ratio has not been ensured according to regulations, specifically the current teacher/class ratio is less than 2 teachers/class. This leads to a shortage of teaching resources, directly affecting the organization of educational activities and reducing the effectiveness of program implementation.

In particular, the province is currently short of 351 preschool teachers compared to the norm, causing difficulties in implementing educational activities in line with the orientation of reforming preschool education programs, limiting the ability to improve the quality of comprehensive education for children. This also affects the ability to meet the requirements of reforming teaching methods, as well as creating the best learning environment for children.

The statistical results of monitoring children's physical development are as follows:

STT	CONTENT	2021	2022	2023	2024
1	Number of underweight malnourished children	63/39,242	36/33,408	49/37,172	9/36,599
2	Stunted malnutrition	86/39,242	51/33,408	50/37,172	28/36,599
3	Overweight and obese children	1,046/39,242	965/33,408	895/37,172	747/36,599