VietNamNet Bridge - The waiving of tuition for pedagogy schools was done to attract excellent students, but budget allocations to the schools remain modest.  

Vietnam allocates 20 percent of the state budget to the educational sector. However, experts say the budget allocation is unreasonable, which leads to low efficiency. 

Analysts commented that the current budget allocation doesn’t encourage schools to make investment to improve training quality.

Nguyen Truong Giang from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said at a workshop on the legal framework for higher education in Vietnam on October 18 that the money is allocated to universities based on the number of students, not on the quality of schools’ graduates.

The waiving of tuition for pedagogy schools was done to attract excellent students, but budget allocations to the schools remain modest.

Most pedagogical school students throughout the country don’t have to pay tuition.

A university lecturer in Hanoi commented that waiving tuition for pedagogic students is an unreasonable policy, though he agrees that in order to improve education quality, it is necessary to produce good teachers. The problem is that the state’s support goes to the wrong places. 

“I believe that only a small percentage of pedagogical school graduates become teachers, while the majority of them take jobs outside their training majors,” he said.

The purpose of the policy is to attract excellent students to pedagogical schools who want to become teachers. “The state’s money has been wasted as graduates don’t work as teachers,” he said.

Meanwhile, the other majors receive 12-15 percent only from the state budget.

Giang from MOF proposed changing the budget allocation policy, raising tuition to ensure training quality and reconsider the policy on tuition waivers.

According to Tran Xuan Nhi, former deputy minister of education, there are two views about whether to continue to offer tuition waiver to pedagogic students.

The first group of experts suggests that the state needs to set the number of pedagogical students Vietnam needs to produce. The students at the schools don’t pay tuition but have to commit to take the jobs offered to them.

The second group suggests that pedagogical students pay tuition during their study at school, but get a tuition refund if they graduate and work as teachers.

Nhi supports the view of the first group, saying that it would be better to set training plans in order to avoid an oversupply of teachers.

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