Vietnam - In-service training – the child who has been denied

VietNamNet Bridge – Local education departments officially refuse to recruit in-service training graduates. As such, the education sector refuses the products it generates itself.

The Ha Nam provincial has made public the recruitment plan for the 2012, stating that it won’t accept the candidates who finish in-service training courses. The candidates are required to finish prestigious state owned universities after following full time training courses.

The recruitment notice signed by Director of the Ha Nam provincial Department of Education and Training Nguyen Van Khoat says that those applying for the teaching jobs at the schools in the province need to have “good level” university degrees granted by prestigious state owned universities.

Especially, the notice specifies the names of the prestigious schools: the Hanoi 1 and Hanoi 2 University of Education, the HCM City University of Education, Thai Nguyen University, Vinh University, and Pedagogical Faculty of the Hanoi National University.

In Vietnam, the graduates of state owned universities under the full-time training mode are the most favorite by employers. The graduates are believed to have good knowledge and high capability to get adapted to the jobs, because they have to pass tough university entrance exams to follow university education.

Meanwhile, those, who finish in-service training courses or graduate from people founded universities, are not highly appreciated by employers, who believe that students follow in-service or distance-training courses only when they fail the entrance exams to universities.

A lot of students would still be able to follow the university education by a “roundabout route”. Since they cannot pass the tough entrance exams to universities, they would accept to study at junior colleges which set lower requirements than universities. After finishing the colleges, they would pass the credits to continue studying at universities to obtain university degrees.

The students would have to pass the exams to enter universities. However, people believe that the exams, organized by the universities themselves, are by far less difficult than the annual national university entrance exams.

Nguyen Quoc Tuan, former Director of the Ha Nam education department said that in fact, the recruitment policy has been applied since 2005 already, which ensures that only the best candidates can become the teachers.

Also according to Tuan, only the graduates at “excellent level” of the Hanoi 1 University of Education would be recruited for the Ha Nam High School for the Gifted.

Nam Dinh province has also said “no” to in-service training graduates since 2008, while it has just refused the graduates from non-state owned schools. Some schools in the province have become so choosy that over the last many years, they only accept the graduates from the Hanoi 1 University of Education.

Vinh Phuc province in 2011 also stated that it would only accept the candidates, who finish full-time mode training of some prestigious schools. Especially, the local education department specified that the students passing credits from junior colleges to universities would not be accepted.

HCM City authorities do not stipulate that in-service training graduates would be refused. However, in fact, as Van Cong Sang, an official of the HCM education department admitted, full-time mode graduates from state owned schools would be the priorities.

As such, more and more localities have said “no” to non-full time training graduates and people-founded school graduates, because the modes of training are believed to churn out “low quality products”.

Especially, local authorities still frankly refuse in-service training graduates, despite the violent criticism from the public, and the dissuasion from legal experts, who believe that they are violating the current laws by setting such strict regulations.

Nguyen Huong

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