Final lesson: Identify the cause, find the appropriate solution

(Baonghean) -It can be affirmed that career counseling, helping students choose a major that suits their abilities and the actual needs of the locality and society after graduating from high school, is very important. However, up to now, the quality and effectiveness of vocational training in schools in the province are still a concern.

Students practice sewing at Nghe An General Technical - Vocational Center.

In our province, the Provincial General Technical - Vocational Guidance Center (under the Department of Education and Training) has the function of vocational training and career counseling for students of secondary and high schools in Vinh City. The common occupations taught by the Center are: Applied informatics, cooking techniques, technical drawing, civil electricity, knitting, hand embroidery and flower arrangement. In the 2012 - 2013 school year, the Center organized vocational training for 3,215 students of 21 secondary schools and 7 high schools; career counseling for 616 students; study counseling for 572 students. Funding for vocational training activities is based on contributions from students, of which secondary school students contributed 54,000 VND, high school students contributed 84,000 VND.

According to the annual high school vocational exam results, more than 99% of students studying at the center achieved good or better results, of which more than 80% achieved excellent results. Ms. Tran Thi Kim Chung - Director of the Center said: "In fact, vocational guidance work has not received the proper attention of the education sector in general and schools in particular. With the current level of contribution, it is very difficult to ensure good implementation of both theoretical teaching, organizing practice and field trips for students according to the requirements of the program. For example, in our center, up to now, only in 2010 has it been possible to organize field trips for students to the Vietnam - Germany Vocational College, the rest of the field trips have been replaced by watching videos and presentations about the activities of vocational training facilities and production facilities, thus not creating interest as well as a clearer awareness of vocational training for students. Most students study to cope and get extra points (from 0.5 to 2 points) for graduation and transfer exams".

In the city, it is like that, in rural and mountainous areas, vocational guidance is even more inadequate. Previously, the whole province had 7 districts with comprehensive technical - vocational guidance centers under the Education sector to coordinate vocational training for students. In recent years, these centers have merged with district-level vocational training centers to form vocational training - vocational guidance centers. However, the facilities of these centers are still very limited, only partially fulfilling the requirements for vocational training for rural workers according to Decision 1956 of the Prime Minister, while vocational training for high school students is completely returned to high schools. Due to limited vocational training capacity, schools only teach a few occupations such as information technology, civil electricity, and farming, with low efficiency. Mr. Hoang Manh Nhan - Principal of Dien Chau 2 High School said: "In recent years, the school has only organized training in one profession, which is Applied Informatics. Although we know that not all students like to study this profession, at least the school has taken advantage of the IT classrooms and available teachers. As for other subjects, the school's teachers can only teach theory, but there is no equipment or materials for practice, so the school cannot organize it."

Since 2011, Nghe An has been one of two provinces in the country supported by the Flemish Organization for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance, Kingdom of Belgium (abbreviated as VVOB) to implement a project to innovate career guidance in secondary schools. Up to now, the project has organized 33 training courses for 1,382 people who are homeroom teachers and Youth Union and Young Pioneer officers of secondary and high schools in the province, helping them grasp the general theory of career guidance and have the skills to provide career counseling to students.

At the Center for General Technology - Career Guidance, in recent years, career counseling software has been applied to career guidance and enrollment work. Students in need of counseling will be tested on their natural and social abilities on a computer, based on which career counseling teachers can give appropriate advice on choosing a school and major. Ms. Truong Thi Thanh Huong - Deputy Director of the Center in charge of career guidance said: "Career guidance is a system of psychological and educational measures to assess the entire physical and intellectual capacity of adolescents and young people, compare those capacities with the requirements of occupations or occupational groups for workers, taking into account the human resource needs of the locality and society, on that basis giving them advice on choosing a career based on science, eliminating cases of luck and immaturity when choosing a career. Therefore, this activity requires teachers to have a deep practical understanding of occupations in society, many fields, have good presentation skills, grasp the psychology of students... However, in the past, the number of students receiving career guidance at the center was not much (from 500 to 600 students per year). The reason is that many students and parents still choose careers based on trends and emotions; the team of teachers doing career guidance is still thin (from 4-6 people), in one session, if completing the full process, can only advise 1-2 children".

According to Mr. Hoang Quoc Khanh - specialist in charge of career guidance education, General Education Department (Department of Education and Training), currently, career guidance activities have not received due attention from many high schools in the province. Most of the teachers teaching career guidance at schools are part-time teachers, some schools assign teachers of civic education, some schools assign homeroom teachers, some schools assign teachers of subjects that lack standard teaching hours... so the effectiveness is not high. Some admissions and career guidance activities coordinated by schools with professional educational institutions are carried out too close to the time of preparing to submit university and college application documents, so many students do not have enough time to think and choose carefully. Moreover, in the consultation sessions, the questions only revolve around the issue of which major and which school will have a high university admission rate, but do not mention much about what that major is like. There are even many cases where admissions consulting is for marketing, promotion, and attracting admissions...

Thus, one of the reasons why the effectiveness of career guidance for students in our province is still low, leading to the situation of "too many teachers, not enough workers" for many years, especially the lack of skilled workers, is partly due to the poor career guidance and streaming work in secondary and high schools. Discussing this issue, Mr. Vo Van Mai - Head of the General Education Department, Department of Education and Training said: "In the coming time, we will continue to seek support from the VVOB Project to further improve the career guidance capacity for teachers doing career guidance work in secondary and high schools in the province. In addition, we will direct schools to strengthen their links with vocational training institutions to organize practical training, increase vocational practice for students, help them have a more complete understanding of vocational training; choose training institutions suitable to the characteristics of students to organize admission consultation, help them have the right choice".

In addition, it is also necessary to review the vocational school system and the university and college system in our province today. Although Nghe An is one of the provinces with the largest vocational school system in the country with 62 vocational training facilities, including: 5 vocational colleges (3 local schools, 2 central schools), 8 vocational colleges, 35 vocational training centers, 14 vocational training facilities (including 37 public vocational training facilities, 25 non-public facilities), but the quality is uneven, mainly concentrated in Vinh City. Vocational schools in mountainous districts and rural areas have limited facilities, old curriculum, and do not meet the needs of learners and local needs. Even in schools with thorough investment, the training fields between schools still overlap, and there are no high-tech fields according to market requirements. The quality of teachers in some vocational schools is still low and uneven, the fear of innovation in teaching methods goes hand in hand with the very common situation of "teaching by rote".

According to Mr. Nguyen Bang Toan - Director of the Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, to achieve the goal of raising the rate of trained workers to 52% by 2015 and over 70% by 2020 according to the Resolution of the 17th Nghe An Provincial Party Congress for the term (2011-2015), our province needs to perfect the mechanism, policies and state management on vocational training, especially policies for apprentices, trained workers, policies for enterprises participating in vocational training...; build and plan the development of a network of vocational training facilities in the province for the period (2011-2020) in accordance with the requirements of human resource training, especially technical worker training facilities; focus on investing in building a system of high-quality schools that meet national, regional and international standards, meeting the demand for technical workers for key economic sectors, industrial parks, export processing zones, and exporting expert labor; Expanding the scale and improving the quality of vocational training in rural areas and ethnic minority areas; applying advanced technology in teaching; expanding the domestic and foreign labor market;…

Quan - Ha