Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ha Noi, Sept. 5 (VNA) -- One of the major tasks of the education and training sector in the 2001-02 academic year and beyond is to comprehensively improve education and training quality, said Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Minh Hien.

Hien was speaking in an interview with the national daily Nhan Dan (People) on the occasion of the start of the 2001-02 school year (Sept. 5).

This school year is of important significance as it marks the start of a new century and millennium and it is also the first year of implementing the Resolution of the ninth Party Congress. The Resolution requires the sector to continue raising its education quality and reforming education curriculum, methodology and administration.

The Minister said that in order to achieve the above-said targets, the sector has defined five key tasks in the 2001-02 school year as follows:

- Thoroughly studying the Party Resolution with focus given to the Party's line on educational and training development, thus raising the sense of responsibility of the sector's staff and officials.

- Strengthening education discipline and order; building a healthy education environment; strictly exercising training rules and education administration regulations, making educational establishments' financial matters more transparent and preventing negative phenomena and social evils from intruding into schools.

- Making active preparations for the introduction of newly reformed text books in primary and junior and senior secondary schools; stepping up training curriculum and methodology in vocational schools, colleges and universities.

- Bringing into full play illiteracy eradication and primary education universalisation achievements toward universalising junior secondary education; encouraging social participation in education activities; providing education for all and creating more favourable conditions for social allowance beneficiaries and children of ethnic communities.

- Strengthening education administrative agencies; completing legal documents in the domain and intensifying supervision and inspection; and improving State management efficiency in education and training.

Asked about the education and training development strategy for 2001-2010 that had been submitted to the Government for appoval, the Minister said the strategy concretizes education and training targets and solutions in the period of national industrialisation and modernisation.

He went on to say that the strategic goal is to create a fundamental and comprehensive change to meet new personnel requirements as human resources have been defined as the decisive factor for the country's industrialisation and modernisation process. In the coming time, efforts will be focused on improving the quality of personnel training to serve national industrialisation and modernisation and on accelerating the tempo of junior secondary education universalisation throughout the country.

To that end, the Ministry has mapped out a series of solutions, covering building a healthy education environment, strengthening education and training administration; and reforming education and training curriculum and methodology. The solutions also focus on developing a contingent of qualified teachers and lecturers, introducing an overall education and training structure with models of education establishments and training methodology in the national education system; expanding the network of schools and education establishments; increasing financial allocation to the sector; pushing up social participation in education activities and broadening international cooperation.

Minister Hien further said that education administration reform is considered a breakthrough in overcoming the existing shortcomings of the sector and successfully creating a basic and comprehensive improvement in education and training.--VNA