VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is collecting opinions for an ambitious project to develop gifted schools in 2010-2020.

Under the plan, by 2015, 50 percent of gifted students will achieve the third rank in foreign languages in accordance with Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) standards. The figure would be 70 percent by 2020.

In order to meet that goal, MOET plans to teach some subjects (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and informatics) in English at gifted schools.

In fact, teaching in English has been implemented in some gifted schools in Vietnam over the last time. Le Hong Minh from the Le Hong Phong Gifted School in HCM City said that 200 students of his school has been studying mathematics and physics in English over the last three years.

The headmaster of Hanoi-Amsterdam Gifted School observed that it is quite possible to teach some key subjects in English. He said that the most important work is to train teachers capable to teach in English and invite foreign teachers to work for gifted schools.

Responding to worries about the quality of program materials, Vu Dinh Chuan, Director of the Secondary Education Department under MOET, said that MOET will be rapidly compile syllabi for some subjects, so that gifted schools will have documents for teaching.

Participants at a conference on development of gifted schools held in Nam Dinh City late last week all agreed that English should be an examination subject for high school entrance exams to encourage students to study English.

MOET has set up an ambitious plan to develop gifted schools so that, by 2015, 100 percent of gifted schools will meet national standards, while 15 gifted schools will receive special investments to become schools with international standards. The scale of gifted schools will be expanded with the number of gifted students in every province and city accounting for three percent of total students.

Gifted students will be appraised based on indices

Chuan from MOET said that gifted schools will not focus on training students for attending competitions, but for comprehensive knowledge in many fields. The students need to be good in their fields, have good foreign language and informatics skills. They need to have necessary life skills, especially the skills of working in teams and practicing. Gifted schools will strive to developing IQ (intelligence quotient), CQ (Creativity quotient)

In order to produce excellent students who score well on IQ and CQ tests, the conference participants agreed that it is necessary to alter selection criteria for gifted schools. Students will be selected in a more reasonable way to identify the best students who will then be trained further.

VietNamNet/TT