VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training will give priority to licensing Japan schools to cooperate with Vietnam in training programs in fields such as technology, medicine and social sciences.

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Nguyen Thi Thanh Minh, deputy director of the International Cooperation Department under the ministry, detailed prioritized areas for training cooperation between Japanese and Vietnamese schools at a workshop in HCMC last week.

Minh said Japanese universities have not joined forces with Vietnam universities for training programs so far.

Speaking at the workshop, many Vietnamese universities said they want to partner with Japanese institutions in teaching Japanese and implementing training programs in other fields.

Vu Dinh Chuan, director of the Secondary Education Department under the ministry, said Vietnam wants Japan universities to help high schools and Japanese teaching centers train students bound for Japan for further study.

Chuan said Japanese has been introduced at high schools in big cities like HCMC, Hanoi, Danang, Hue and Haiphong. The ministry and the Japanese embassy are working on Japanese teaching programs at high schools in Vietnam.

A representative of Bach Viet College said the school wants to open a Japanese faculty and ask Japanese teachers to come for assistance. Meanwhile, the Food Industry University expressed interest in cooperating with Japanese universities in a number of courses.

Statistics revealed at the workshop showed over 26,000 Vietnamese had studied in Japan as of May 2014. Vietnam ranks second among international students in Japan and eighth in the number of people learning Japanese in the world.