VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) wants to select excellent students for education universities in order to produce good teachers, because it believes only good teachers can produce good students. However, it still has not found solutions to the issue.

In 1990s, MOET tried to call excellent students to schools of education with the policy of exempting tuition for these schools. The policy helped attract many excellent students to education universities. 

The numbers of students registering to attend the entrance exams to education universities increased sharply year after year, while the competition ratios were sky high.

Education schools were then among top-tier schools, to which only very excellent students with high marks from the national university entrance exams could enter.

However, as Nguyen Thi Kim Phung, acting director of the MOET’s University Education Department commented, the policy is no longer suitable to the new circumstances.

As teachers find it hard to get good jobs, students tend to not choose pedagogical schools. They would not follow the study branches which do not allow them to find good jobs after graduation. 

Going to medical, pharmaceutical and business schools are the priority choice for the majority of high school graduates. 

Phung commented that if MOET maintains the policy on exempting tuition for pedagogical school students, it will only be able to ‘encourage poor students to study to become teachers’, not to ‘call excellent students to pedagogical schools’.

A high school teacher in Hanoi also said that poor students would bother about tuition, but excellent students would not.

“Excellent students do not bother about tuition because they can find good jobs to get money to pay back the money they borrow now to fund their studies,” he said.

Phung believes that it is necessary to apply new policies to encourage good students to go to pedagogical schools.

The schools under the Ministry of Public Security can enroll good students because they not only offer free training, but also follow good job policies. 

The schools’ graduates do not have worries about jobs after graduation, because they would be able to take the jobs they want after certain periods of working as requested.

“We are considering applying the staff rotation policies which allow to ensure jobs for pedagogical school graduates,” Phung said.

She also said that the ministry is going ahead with the plan to reorganize the school system so as to be able to choose good students for education schools. The training scale would be reconsidered based on the number of learners and the policies on family planning.

Tien Phong