Worries raised about fate of $80 million education project

Will the $80 million project on reforming general education be successful, or will it fail like other multi-trillion projects, including the classification of majors, VNEN and national program on foreign language teaching?

VietNamNet Bridge - Will the $80 million project on reforming general education be successful, or will it fail like other multi-trillion projects, including the classification of majors, VNEN and national program on foreign language teaching?

The draft of the new general education curriculum released by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is a part of the general education renovation project worth $80 million which took effect on August 8, 2016 and will end in 2020.

Of this, $77 million is from the World Bank’s ODA and $3 million from reciprocal capital.

According to the Management Board of the Project on General Education Renovation, the project has seven programs 1) new curriculum for new general education 2) teaching materials and documents guiding the compilation of textbooks for individuals and organizations 3) sets of textbooks compiled by MOIT 4) textbooks to lent to poor students 5) bilingual textbooks (Vietnamese and ethnic minority languages) 6) online teacher training system and 7)'system for periodic assessment of national education capacity.

According to Nguyen Minh Thuyet, chief editor of the frame curriculum for general education, if there is a reasonable implementation plan, the new general education program will succeed, especially when teachers and schools have been preparing for the program for some years.

MOET, for example, has organized integrated teaching in accordance with topics, and introduced new teaching methods that focus on developing students’ abilities.

The ministry has also instructed pedagogical schools in the country to reform the curricula and methods of training teachers.

However, while Thuyet shows optimism about the success of the new general education program, many education experts have doubts about the feasibility of the program. They fear that the costly program would fail like many other costly projects in the past.

Some of the experts commented that they find the program ‘vague’, ‘general’ and ‘not feasible’. They said they have no information about how the facilities and teaching staff have been prepared.

“Everything is still at zero, while we plan to apply the new general education program on a large scale next year,” a high school teacher in Hanoi said.

Nguyen Thien Tong, former lecturer of the HCMC University of Technology, said he still cannot see the clear role of teachers in the education reform, while it is teachers who will implement the tasks of the reform.

He went on to say that in Vietnam, some large cities like Hanoi and HCMC have powerful resources and good conditions to reform education. However, they cannot make decisions, but still have to rely on MOET.

“The reform in education will succeed only if MOET stops taking on too much work,” he commented.