Vietnam - Non-state schools told to upgrade themselves, not to depend on policies

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has rejected the proposal by the Association of Non-state owned Schools to remove the floor mark scheme, calling on the schools to assess their training quality, upgrade the capability and build up strong brands to attract students.

Rescue themselves instead of expecting too much on policies

The Association of Non-state owned Schools some days ago proposed MOET to remove the floor mark scheme--believed as the main barrier that prevent non-state owned schools enroll students.

MOET announces the floor marks for different university entrance exam groups every year, which are understood as the minimum marks students must obtain from the exams in order to be eligible for registering study at any universities in Vietnam.

The problem that the students, whose exam results are equal or better than the required levels, would prefer applying for studying at state owned schools to non-state owned schools. Meanwhile, the students, who cannot enter state owned schools and want to follow the university education at people-founded schools, cannot be enroll in the schools, because they do not have the required floor marks.

Professor Tran Hong Quan, Chair of the association, also explained that the proposal aims to help non-state owned schools, which have been complaining about the lack of students in the last many years, find it easier to enroll learners.

However, Quan said, with the above said decision by MOET, if non-state owned schools do not rescue themselves by upgrade the training quality, carry out scientific research and apply new educational technologies, they would not be able to survive.

Dr Tran Hong Quan said that the association is considering setting up a human resource research and development, and a center for accrediting training quality, which would serve the internal inspection of the association’s member schools, thus helping the schools upgrade the training quality.

In an effort to attract more students, non-state owned schools themselves want to be accredited, which helps them build up their brands, considering the brands as the most important factor to attract more learners.

From September 2012, the FPT University would put the school management software piece, developed by Hitachi group and FPT Software, into operation in the trial basis.

The software product is believed to help better manage information, facilitating the student management, finance and administration management, as well as the system, infrastructure control, ensuring the security and service quality.

Common standards for both state owned and non-state owned schools

The issue that most interests non-state owned schools, is which standards are to be used for conducting the training quality verification. The President of a well- known non-state owned school in Hanoi has warned that when schools have accredited, they would “have problems” in some important matters, especially the criterion on lecturers’ standards.

According to him, non-state owned schools would not be able to satisfy the MOET’s requirement on the ratio of permanent lecturers on students. Therefore, non-state owned schools have proposed to reconsider the issue.

Meanwhile, the investment mechanisms are clearly different for state owned and non-state owned school systems. While the State gives money to state owned schools from their very beginning and allocates budget for the schools’ operation every year, non-state owned schools have to arrange their financial resources themselves.

The representative from Luong The Vinh University has asked to apply the same standards for both state owned and non-state owned schools in terms of the scientific research and technology development.

President of the Hong Bang International University Nguyen Manh Hung said that if specific standards are applied to non-state owned schools, this may lead to unnecessary differences in the training system.

Source: NLD

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