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1. To develop something, need to invest on it first
“I am very impressed by a statement by Prime Minister of Malaysia. Why is Singapore ranked 6th in the world in the field of vocational training and 19th in skills of human resource? This is because that they are willing to invest 200 million USD for a vocational school. While here in Vietnam who dares to ask for 100 billion to invest for a vocational school, where the money comes from? "- said Mr. Truong Anh Dung, General Director of DVET.
A lot of bottlenecks were "candidly" exposed by General Director Truong Anh Dung at the Workshop on Perspectives, objectives and breakthroughs for Vocational Trainign and Education (VET) Development for the period of the 2021-2030 held in Quang Ninh, which reveals an overview of VET.
"During the past 30 years, population growth is a very important driving force that greatly contributes to Vietnam's GDP growth," said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in the Vietnam Skills Enhancement Forum. But that circumstance has changed for the past 5 years, when the size of the labor force has reached its limit. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on improving the quality of labor.
“50% of Singaporean students after graduating from high school enroll to vocational training, in Western countries the rate is 60-70%, while Vietnam only 15%. In Singapore, each worker is granted apprenticeship card which is like a bank card valued 500 Singapore dollars to learn advanced courses, update skills and knowledge and reissued more cards when money in the card is used up.”
In recent 5 years, on Independence Day, the Prime Minister of Singapore, instead of organizing monumental meetings, went to a vocational school to celebrate the day. "It clearly shows their views on honoring and encouraging apprentices."
While in Vietnam, there is a real story in a region that I could not mention the name, on Vietnamese Teachers' Day 20th October, agencies and authorities only come to congratulate teachers at universities, high schools, junior high schools ..., not those in vocational institutions, even in the smallest institutions, such as villages and communes, people usually honor and praise families with children studying in universities not those who study in VET institutions.
2. Where is Vietnam's vocational TRAINING education’S POSITION?
Vietnam has population of more than 90 million people with more than 55 million laborers while every year only 2.2 million laborers are trained, of which 560,000 at collegiate level and intermediate level. The trained labor force accounts for 25% of total laborers, which is completely inadequate. The Prime Minister asked to double or triple this rate, however, currently it is difficult for vocational training institutions to reach current targeted enrolment, if increasing this number to 2-3 times, how it possible? Who to be recruited for training?
We believe that for the strategy of vocational education in the coming period, if we only recruit students from high school, it will be very difficult because each year only more than 1 million students graduate from high schools. Moreover, we have to compete with universities since not all of these students will enroll for vocational training. Therefore, in the coming time, an open vocational training and education system must be designed to focus on retraining, continuing training, updating vocational knowledge and skills for those working in the labor market. This is an issue that we need to extremely concentrate on in the coming period.
In 2019, Vietnam moved up 13 places to rank 102nd out of 114 countries in vocational training quality but the real quality is still too low be compared with that of ASEAN countries. The transformation of training model and digital transformation has been carried out very slowly. Vocational education institutions will have to gradually adapt to autonomy mechanism and competition rules. This is a matter of survival. With the autonomy mechanism, weak institutions will surely "die", strong ones will "survive". So the idea is to accept to "sacrifice", screening, removing and merging weak institutions into stronger ones for a better vocational education training system.
3. The key issue is to clearly identify viewpoint on position of Vietnamese vocational education
Finance, autonomy mechanisms, teacher quality, digital technology transformation, streaming ... all of these issues have many difficulties, however, to conclude: “The most important thing is to clearly define viewpoint on position, role of VET in overall socio-economic development strategy and human resource development strategy”.
VET is not merely an issue of education but more importantly it is economic issues, productivity and competitiveness. We need to depend on each period, situation and growth model to choose different mechanism related to human resource development. “This time, priority must be given to VET. This is an international recommendation for all countries, not only for Vietnam”.
Recently in a press, a senior expert, a member of the National Assembly, when answering a press interview on vocational training and education, said that: "Vocational training and education is a factor in socio-economic development".
Australia has a population of just over 20 million but it has 4,000 vocational training and education institutions, while we only have 2,000 institutions for a population of more than 90 million and yet we are looking to reduce this number.
It is a story of perspective and thinking about VET, which exists not only among students, parents but also VET managers of all levels. We need to clearly define how the role of VET to make adequate strategy for investment.
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