VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of
Education and Training (MOET) plans to renovate the education curriculums and
textbooks for grammar schools with a project worth 70 trillion dong. However,
educators have raised doubts about the project.

The project
focuses on renovating the education curriculums and compiling textbooks for
grammar schools, which is expected to cost 962 billion dong, upgrading the
material facilities (35 trillion dong), investing in teaching aids (30,050
billion dong) and implementing the pilot textbook program (3,591 billion dong).

The project
is planned to be implemented on a trial basis in 2017, before it is carried out
in a large scale from 2019.

Under the
National Assembly’s Resolution No 49, the investment projects capitalized at 35
trillion dong and more, of which 11 trillion dong at least come from the state
budget, must be seen as important national projects, and must be submitted to
the National Assembly for approval.

Therefore,
the 70 trillion dong education development plan will be put into discussion at
the National Assembly’s meetings.

It seems
that the project by MOET has not been applauded by educators and education
experts. At first glance, the project has not caught the sympathy from them.

Professor
Nguyen Minh Thuyet, who worked at the National Assembly’s Committee for
Culture, Education, Youth and Children; noted that in general, the authors of
national projects always showed grandiose volumes of documents to explain the
projects. Meanwhile, the draft plan on education development, opened for
collecting opinions from scientists just comprises of 30 paper pages,
therefore, it seems to be unconvincing.

Thuyet, on
one hand, agrees that it is necessary to build up new education curriculums and
new textbooks for grammar schools, on the other hand, said that MOIT is
following a reverse order in developing education.

“The
education strategy until 2020 has not been officially released, while MOIT
tries to build up curriculums and compile textbooks,” Thuyet said.

Dr Nguyen
Ke Hao, former Director of the Primary Education Department under MOIT, said
that the Document of the 11th Communist Party Congress requires a fundamental
and comprehensive education renovation in Vietnam. How will Vietnam’s
education be renovated? Will the current 12-year general school mechanism exist,
or will Vietnamese students spend 9 or 10 years at general schools like in
other countries?

“We still
do not have an education development strategy for 2011-2020, so what is the
basis for MOIT to compile the project?” Hao questioned. “I think that it would
be better to think that we have not read the draft project. We just consider
the draft project as a “rough copy” compiled by a group of authors who try to
list the works that need to be done”.

Other
experts share the same view with Hao, saying that the draft project still needs
just causes to appear.

Professor
Chu Hao, former of the Ministry of Science and Technology, noted that MOIT
tries to compile new curriculums and textbooks, even though there has been no
review and conclusion about the currently applied curriculums and textbooks. He
believes that it is necessary to review the implementation of the current
curriculums to find out the problems first, and then build up new systems.

What to do
to ease the education curriculums? What to do to give career advice to high
school students ? How to settle the problems in the examination and testing
schemes? The questions remain unanswered.

“There has
been no scientific research work about a program which has been implemented
over the last 10 years. Therefore, there is no scientific foundation for the
next projects,” he said.

According
to Professor Van Nhu Cuong, the thing that MOIT needs to do now is to renovate
the whole education system. Since it is a long term goal, in the immediate
time, MOIT should try to make the curriculums not overloaded to students. “This
proves to be useful and less costly,” Cuong said.

C. V