Executive Summary

Vietnam is on the way to shifting its economy from centralised and subsidised mechanism to a socialist-orientated market mechanism and to step by step industrialise and modernise the country. In this context, the training of human resources to fulfil the goals of socio-economic development constitutes a significant and immediate task. Therefore, the education and training together with the science and technology have been considered first national priorities and should be further developed in the future with respect to both their scale and quality.

During the last few years, Vietnam has been restructuring the Voc/Tech education systems along the following directions:

Diversifying forms schools, classes and courses

Providing the youth and other workers with new opportunities to study by giving then various choices in terms of further education, which are suitable to the capacities and conditions of each person, thus rendering education and training popular, with the noble goals of enhancing the educational level of the population, training manpower and enriching the already gifted people. Under the new regulations there are multigrades and many levels for technical and vocational schools. This diversification will help the Voc/Tech system to expand so as to meet the varying needs for manpower of various economic sectors and geographical areas, build its ties with the community and rapidly respond to the socio-economic requirements of the country.

Improving curricula and training methods in order to make the system more flexible

The scientific-technological revolution is going on rapidly changing the characteristics and nature of the labour work. The utilisation of modern facilities and automatic equipment has increases the intellectual nature of the work conducted by the labourers, therefore, the skilled workers must have a high educational level and adequate basic technological knowledge. Therefore, workers and technicians must have wide knowledge and skills and be trained with a wide profile.

Socialising education - training

While the investment capacity of the State is still limited, schools should mobilise many investment sources to exist and develop. On the other hand, it is necessary to make full use of the brain and golden hands of the society in the process of training. This policy points to the need for developing semi-public and private schools and classes.