Only 8.1 percent intend to undergo vocational training while up to 82 percent want to enter university, according to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET).

At a recent seminar to look out solutions to career guidance for senior high school pupils, delegates said that the quality and efficiency of career guidance programmes remains poor, which often brings pressure to bear upon university entrance examinations and produces a great imbalance in education and training and in the labour market every year.

The fact is that most pupils are not interested in vocational training even when their abilities are not good enough to go to a higher education level.

Dr. Quach Tuan Ngoc, Head of the MoET’s Information and Technology Department said that the results of university and college entrance examinations in the last eight ysears showed that hundreds of candidates could not achieve even bottom marks in the subjects they study because they got the wrong end of the stick right at the second level of general education. This means they would rather choose another form of education or training as soon as they finished their junior high school education.

Local education and training departments claimed that they were facing many difficulties developing career guidance plans for pupils. Annually, more than 400,000 junior high school graduates fail to enter senior high school. Some of them continue to learn at local education centres or vocational schools and the rest join the labour market, said Hoang Ngoc Vinh, Head of MoET’s the Professional Education Department.

Nguyen Van Hoc, vice director of the training and human resources supply centre at the Ministry of Education and Training said the bottom line is that they lacked a long-term strategy and plans for vocational development. In fact, Vietnam is desperately short of qualified vocational training teachers. The country does not have enough educational bases from which it can provide career guidance to senior high schools.

Another snag is that vocational training units do not have proper facilitates in place for trainees. According to the Institute of Educational Science, Vietnam currently has 300 career guidance centres, which cater for 800,000 vocational trainees while the number of pupils who need to undergo vocational training is 1.6 million.

“If we encourage every pupil who finishes senior high school to take vocational training courses there won’t be enough classes for them because vocational training schools are understaffed and poorly equipped, said Pham Ngoc Thanh, vice director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training.

Mr Thanh proposed establishing a steering board for career guidance to help every community get to the root of the problem.

Cao Van Sam, deputy head of the Vocational Training Department, said that Vietnamese people should change their attitude and realise that “Certificates must be earned, not won”. As qualifications and salaries greatly affect the kind of vocational training that the people choose, the Government should change its payment policy for vocational trainees and invest more in vocational training to attract greater numbers of pupils who like to train in the skills the businesses need.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Educational and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan, said that the ministry should focus on improving the quality of vocational teachers by keeping all vocational training programmes in line with market demand. He insisted that educational managers make changes in their career guidance services in the future and schools establish strategic partnerships with businesses. Each business should become a career guidance provider, Mr Nhan said.

VietNamNet/VOV