At the opening of the national council for appraising textbooks for second graders some days ago, Thai Van Tai, director of the MOET’s Primary Education Department, said the ministry has received applications for textbook appraisal from four publishing houses, including the Vietnam Education Publishing House, the University of Education Publishing House, the HCM City University of Education Publishing House, and the HCM City National University Publishing House.

There are 33 sample textbooks for nine learning subjects and education activities for the second grade. These include four samples for mathematics and eight for English. The other subjects (Vietnamese language, Morality, Nature and Society, Physical Education, Music, Arts and Experience Activities) have three for each subject.

The samples of Vietnamese language textbooks have caught special attention from the public, especially after many textbooks were criticized for their quality.

Two of the three samples of Vietnamese language textbooks belong to ‘Ket noi tri thuc voi cuoc song’ (connecting knowledge and life) set of textbooks and ‘Chan troi sang tao’ (creative horizon), both of which belong to the Vietnam Education Publishing House. The remaining belongs to ‘Canh Dieu’ (Kite) of the HCM City University of Education Publishing House.

The two-round textbook appraisal of the first campaign has finished. No sample has met the requirements.

Thai said MOET will begin to receive the applications for appraising textbooks in the second campaign from publishing houses from November 15 to the end of November 30.

The samples that meet requirements will be approved by the Minister of Education and Training and chosen by local schools to be put into use in the 2021-2022 academic year.

MOET’s Deputy Minister Nguyen Huu Do has said that to improve the quality of textbooks, MOET will focus on controlling book experimentation.

Under current regulations on the compilation and publishing of textbooks, experimenting with, or trying out, certain texts is a must.

The documents associated with the applications for textbook appraisal must include reports about where the textbooks are used to teach as experimental texts, and the time and content of experiments.

Appraisal councils will only begin the appraisal after reading the results of the experiments.

“Previously, publishing houses coordinated with textbook authors to carry out these experiments. But in the future, MOET will also participate in the process,” Do said.

He went on to say that the internal assessment at publishing houses will be enhanced. Publishing houses will only send samples of textbooks to MOET after internal assessment is conducted.

He also said that it is necessary to expand the audience in order to collect more opinions about the textbooks and the eventual editing. 

Thanh Hung

Education Ministry gives back $16 million initially budgeted for textbook compilation

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has given back $16 million that was initially allocated to it to compile textbooks.

Lawmakers raise concerns over quality of controversial textbooks, demanded accountability

Many National Assembly (NA) deputies raised concerns over the quality of the first-grade textbook set and demanded accountability for the issue in the plenary session on socio-economic issues on Wednesday in Hanoi.