VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of regulations in the education and training sector have been found as unfeasible and contradictory. As a result, schools and students can only ignore the regulations and get fined.

The impractical requirements

The Circular No. 28 released by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) on October 21, 2009, stipulates that headmasters of general schools must have two teaching hours a week.

However, in HCM City, no one can obey the regulation. “A headmaster cannot take on too much work even though he has 12 working hours per day. He not only has to take care for the school, but also has to attend the meetings with the local authorities regularly,” the headmaster of a primary school in HCM City explained.

The regulation on the required land area at 25 square meters per student is also clearly out of reach of universities.

A recent survey by MOET has found that the average ratio of the universities in Hanoi is just 13 square meters per student, while 40 percent of schools have the ratio at less than 5 square meters per student. These include the biggest and best known schools such as the Hanoi Civil Engineering University, Hanoi Foreign Trade University, Hanoi National Economics University and Hanoi University of Technology.

In HCM City, the average ratio is 20 square meters per student only. It is estimated that 30 percent of schools have the ratio lower than 5 square meters per student.

Also according to MOET, only 9 out of the 35 universities put under the ministry’s management can meet the requirement.

Prohibiting first, allowing later

The 2005 Education Law stipulates that universities can only provide 3-year training (equal to junior college training) and higher training levels. However, MOET once allowed the schools to provide 2-year training (intermediate vocational school) training as well.

As a result, universities enrolled high numbers of students who followed 2-year training courses, while real vocational schools left idle.

Realizing the problem, in December 2011, MOET released Circular No. 57 which stipulated that universities must not provide training 2-year vocational training.

However, just six months later, since June 2012, the vocational training by universities has been resumed. Explaining this, MOET said schools need some more time to gradually narrow the training scale, before this stops by 2017.

Tightening or loosening control?

MOET emphasizes the necessity to tighten the management over the training to ensure the high training quality in the context of the global integration. However, loopholes still exist.

In the Circular No. 57 released in November 2011, MOET set a required ratio of lecturers on students. The strict regulation turns out to be too easy, because the ratio can be calculated by the operation: total number of full-time students divided by the total number of lecturers.

As such, the ministry cannot control the ratio of lecturers on students in every training major.

MOET is also believed to set too easy requirements on the students studying at medical schools. A lot of schools which have medical faculties have been found recently as incapable to provide training in the major due to the lack of experiences, teaching staff and material facilities.

Nguyen Hien