Minister of Education and Training: Determined to re-plan pedagogical schools
Faced with low admission scores to teacher training schools, Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha said the Ministry will decide to re-plan teacher training schools.
This year's admission season, while the benchmark scores of many top universities and many majors have increased sharply, the benchmark scores of some teacher training colleges are very low, with some teacher training colleges even announcing the admission of candidates with less than 10 points/3 subjects. This makes many people worry about the quality of the future teaching staff.
This issue "heated up" the Conference on the Summary of the 2016-2017 school year and the directions and tasks for the 2017-2018 school year of universities and pedagogical schools held on the morning of August 11 in Hanoi.
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| Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha speaks at the Conference. |
Re-planning of teacher training colleges across the country
Speaking at the conference, Minister Phung Xuan Nha said that public opinion should have a comprehensive and thorough view of the low admission scores to teacher training colleges. Because if analyzed, not all teacher training majors this year have very low entrance scores. There are some majors with quite high or relatively high admission scores, but there are also some majors with low scores, especially in colleges that offer teacher training.
Through monitoring actual admissions, the majority of admitted candidates have higher exam scores than the admission scores announced by the school.
"The Ministry of Education and Training is resolutely planning the pedagogical schools across the country. However, this is an issue related to many policies not only belonging to the Ministry of Education and Training but also to many other ministries and sectors. Planning the pedagogical school system requires time and process, and cannot be done in just 1-2 years.
“At the beginning of reform, touching anything will create many different perceptions. There will certainly be some fluctuations at first, but after that, all issues will stabilize and improve with the determination of the whole industry,” Minister Phung Xuan Nha affirmed.
The Minister of Education and Training said that the Ministry will have separate working sessions with teacher training colleges to make appropriate calculations. In particular, the planning of the teacher training college network will have to be prioritized immediately. There will be central colleges, branch colleges and satellite colleges.
“The education sector, if it wants to improve the quality of input, must learn from the experience of the police and military sectors, which is to assign annual quotas, have preferential policies on tuition fees, and be assigned jobs after graduation. Only then will the input be high. However, the entrance score is only one factor. The process of selecting teacher candidates for teacher training colleges must pay attention to professional aptitude and pay attention to the capacity and qualities of teachers. No matter what, we must make teacher candidates feel proud when entering teacher training colleges,” Minister Phung Xuan Nha emphasized.
Will strongly innovate university governance
Regarding university autonomy, the Minister said that schools must consider autonomy as the destination to improve quality, not just a financial issue. Instead of administrative state budget grants, they will be granted according to tasks based on output quality and without distinction between public and private.
From now on, schools must strongly innovate university governance. Schools that want to develop must innovate their governance thinking, not manage as usual. The Ministry is in the process of developing standards for principals and school board chairmen, from which a brief training program will be developed so that principals and school board chairmen can self-study to meet governance requirements.
Looking back at the recent university entrance exam, the Minister said that one of the reasons for the increase in fake candidates was that candidates did not have enough information. Therefore, it is time for schools to change their perception when setting admission targets and providing admissions counseling.
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| With only 3 points/subject, candidates can study at Bac Ninh Pedagogical College. |
From now on, universities will be responsible for their own "input". Therefore, it is necessary to consider what majors the market needs and which segments are suitable for admissions consulting. In particular, spend a lot of time on career counseling for students in accordance with the needs of the labor market.
The Minister also informed that recently the Ministry of Education and Training has focused on investing in developing job support centers and forecasting labor market needs to help schools have comprehensive information.
However, according to the Minister, each school must still proactively research the market because each school has its own segment. From the research, schools will make appropriate adjustments to the content, curriculum, and training professions.
Sharing the difficulties of higher education today, the Minister emphasized that we are in a transitional period, and since it is a transitional period, we must accept the difficulties and fluctuations, but if there is no change, it cannot be called innovation. Therefore, there needs to be a shared responsibility between the Ministry and higher education institutions.
“The policy is that by 2020 all schools will have to be autonomous. From now until then, the Ministry will coordinate to implement and remove difficulties for schools. Any problems under the Ministry's authority will be immediately resolved. For issues beyond its authority, the Ministry will consult with ministries, branches and report to the Government. The responsibility of universities is not to sit and wait but to be proactive in taking reasonable and sustainable steps towards autonomy,” Minister Phung Xuan Nha emphasized.
The core tasks of higher education To promote educational development, in the coming time, the Ministry of Education and Training will focus on the following key tasks: 1. Complete the re-planning of the network of higher education institutions and teacher training institutions, encourage the development/establishment of new non-public universities operating on a non-profit basis; increase the use of state management tools such as public and transparent information on quality assurance conditions, output results, and educational quality assessment to guide investment and reorganize and rearrange facilities in the system to suit the country's human resource development needs. 2. Complete the system of legal regulations, create a legal corridor to promote university autonomy; create conditions for training institutions to promote dynamism and creativity to improve training quality; establish a School Council in the entire system; complete quality standards for university education as a basis for training institutions to implement autonomy, competent management agencies, society and learners to monitor. 3. Continue to promote the effectiveness of high-quality training programs, strengthen scientific research activities, and link training with market needs to increase the employment rate of graduates. 4. Complete the development of standards for lecturers and managers to train and foster, meeting the requirements of high-quality training and effective higher education management in the context of university autonomy and international integration. 5. Strengthening the work of forecasting human resource needs, developing training occupations suitable to the requirements of the labor market, implementing linkage between vocational education and higher education to promote streaming; strengthening facilities, promoting the application of IT in teaching, learning and educational management; improving the quality of foreign language teaching, especially English, expanding international integration in higher education. 6. Promote quality assessment of training facilities and training programs, encourage assessment according to regional and international standards, strengthen self-assessment and external assessment to improve the quality of education and training./. |
According to VOV
