HCM City has persuaded students that vocational school should be seen as a “transitional step” before studying at universities.

Educators have spent a lot of time discussing how to encourage students to go to vocational schools. And they found a solution: showing them that vocational schools can be just a first step in going on to study at universities later by transferring credits.

Therefore, the vocational school system in the national education system needs to accept the credit transfer to allow students to study further at university level.

Pham Ngoc Thanh, deputy director of the HCM City Education and Training says the “study orientation” will help students programme their future and make them understand that about lifelong learning.

However, the method has been described by Mai Van Bay, Chairman of the Hurman Resource Development Association as fundamentally flawed.

High salaries will successfully persuade students to go to vocational school

Bay said that if Vietnam had a reasonable wage policy which allowed skilled workers to have high salaries, it would be easy to persuade students to go to vocational schools. Meanwhile, currently, studying further at universities remains the top choice of most of students, while vocational schools are where they go when they have no choice.

Other experts point out that it would be a waste of time to consider vocational school as a stepping stone to university study. If so, skilled manual workers would become scarce.

Meanwhile, enterprises, especially private businesses, confirmed that university degrees are not the most important thing they consider when recruiting.

Luu Van Si, director of Doan Phat Company said all employers want to recruit the right people for the right posts who can undertake jobs immediately and soon adapt to requirements.

Educators, experts and analysts offered lots of suggestions at the workshop on renovating and developing professional training held in HCM City on January 23.

Students naturally only go to prestigious schools. Therefore, experts say, it is necessary to upgrade the quality of vocational schools, including the material facilities, training curriculums and lecturers’ qualification. Nguyen Minh Thanh, chairman of the HCM City Vocational Training Association said that Vietnam should have vocational schools with national status like it has national universities..

Minh Quyen