VietNamNet Bridge - Phung Xuan Nha has taken the mission of working as the ‘supreme commander’ of the education & training sector. Many tasks are awaiting to be done during his tenure.

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha

Nha has made great impression on the local press with his statements and viewpoints when meeting reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing National Assembly’s session.

“It is unreasonable to say curricula and textbooks are the target of education. It is people which p education targets,” Nha said.

“I believe that education is not a battle. You will finish your work when a battle finishes. But education is the work which must be done continuously through many years,” he said.

“My task is creating confidence among people and in the society. Only when the society has confidence in education, will we get triumph. If not, we will lose,” he stated.

Tran Xuan Nhi, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, commented that what the newly elected minister needs to reconsider in the immediate time is the reorganization of the national education system.

“The new minister needs to find out how the national education system, from preschool to university, should be organized,” Nhi said.

“After a system is set up, he will need to say how the system should be managed,” he said, adding that the educational system management has been ‘patchy’ for the last many years.

“I believe that education is not a battle. You will finish your work when a battle finishes. But education is the work which must be done continuously through many years,” Phung Xuan Nha, Minister of Education and Training

Nhi also said that MOET would also need to reconsider the exam mechanism. It would be better to let local authorities to organize high school finals, while MOET would act as the supervisor, not an organizer.

Meanwhile, organizing university entrance exams and enrolling students should be the job of universities. Since universities have been given the autonomy by the higher education law, they must have the right to determine who and how they will enroll and train.

What MOET needs to do is not to intervene in schools’ operation, but ‘grant quotas’ to schools to be sure the training scale is suitable to schools’ capability.

Le Tien Hung, former director of the Nghe An provincial Education and Training Department, agreed with Nhi that it would be better to allow local education departments to organize high school finals, and allow universities to organize university entrance exam.

Hung does not think that the current 2-in-1 exam mechanism, under which one national exam is organized instead of two separate high school finals and university entrance exam, is a good idea. 

The 2-in-1 exam is designed in order to help save money and time. However, Hung thinks that it is unreasonable because the two exams have two different targets and cannot be merged.


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