Part 1: Urgent need to reorganize vocational school network
In recent years, the number of skilled workers in Nghe An has increased quite a bit. However, compared to the potential of the labor market and actual needs, it has not yet met the requirements. The vocational school system in general has not yet fully promoted its functions and roles in training.
Thanh Nga - My Ha• August 26, 2024
Vocational education is one of the important tasks that Nghe An province has paid attention to for many years. With a vocational school system of up to 53 schools, Nghe An is considered the center of vocational education in the region and has a position compared to the whole country, with 9 colleges, 12 secondary schools, 22 vocational education centers and 10 other facilities participating in vocational training.
In fact, in recent times, vocational schools in Nghe An have made great efforts in recruiting and training students. The scale of enrollment and training of vocational training institutions in the province is increasing, the structure of training occupations is planned and developed to meet social needs. Thanks to that, the number of students in classes and high school graduates registering for vocational training is increasing. In addition, due to good propaganda work, people's awareness of vocational training has gradually changed and created a premise for vocational schools to be more favorable in recruiting students.
Yen Thanh Economic - Technical College (Yen Thanh district) is one of the bright spots in vocational training in recent years. In particular, in the past few years, almost every year Yen Thanh Economic - Technical College has achieved over 90% of its enrollment target, including nearly 300 targets for the intermediate level each year. The school's leaders said that this was a great effort of the school, the result of the efforts of the admissions officers to promote and mobilize families, parents and students.
The enrollment basically met the target in recent years, which also helped Yen Thanh College of Economics and Technology maintain stable operations, create regular jobs for staff and teachers in the unit and do a good job in personnel and policy work.
Sharing more about that result, Mr. Tran Trung Thuan - Vice Principal in charge of school operations added: The school determined that enrollment determines the effectiveness of the unit's operations. Therefore, in an area where the enrollment area is mainly limited to the district, if vocational training is not done well, it will be difficult for people to trust and send their children to study. In addition, we also determined that job creation after training is an important task in the school's construction and development strategy.
In recent years, despite difficulties due to the pandemic, Yen Thanh College of Economics and Technology has always sought to expand and strengthen cooperative relationships with businesses to solve employment for students. Up to now, the school has built sustainable cooperative relationships with many companies and businesses across the country such as: LILAMA 18 Company; AMECC Construction Mechanical Joint Stock Company, Nam Trieu Shipbuilding Company, MLB Japan Garment Company; An Hung Company Limited... Therefore, for over 90% of graduates, the school has had 100% of orders for students to choose from at corporations...
In the whole province, according to the report of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee, in recent years, the Department of Education and Training, the Department of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs, the People's Committees of districts, cities, towns, educational and vocational training institutions have done a good job of consulting, streaming, and orienting junior high school and high school graduates to enter vocational training.
Thanks to that, each year the whole province has about 82-85 thousand people in need of vocational training at all levels with a total of 57 occupations. Specifically: The agricultural occupation group has a demand of 45-46.5% and the non-agricultural occupation group accounts for 53.5-55% of the vocational training demand of the whole province. In 2023, educational institutions enrolled and trained 68,272 people, reaching 104.2% of the plan; of which, 5,080 people have college degrees, 9,934 people have intermediate degrees, 53,258 people have primary and training under 3 months, contributing to raising the rate of trained workers to 69%, of which those with diplomas and certificates reach 28.6%; the employment rate reaches 80.7%.
According to the assessment of the Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, the quality of vocationally trained labor in the province has gradually met the needs of the domestic and foreign labor markets better, especially the needs of industrial parks, industrial clusters, FDI enterprises and exports. The capacity and quality of vocational training of vocational training institutions have been gradually improved.
In particular, training institutions have focused on and promoted the signing of contracts with 167 enterprises to develop training programs, and signed contracts with 150 enterprises to order training and recruit workers. The rate of college and intermediate level students having jobs after graduation is over 80%. In particular, some occupations have a high number of students having jobs immediately after graduation such as welding (91%), industrial electricity (95%), metal cutting (89%), hotel management (89%), food processing technology (94.5%), automotive technology (94%), restaurant management (92%), refrigeration and air conditioning technology (94%). Currently, the average starting salary for college students is 8-10 million VND/month, secondary school students is 6.5-9 million VND/month and some high-income professions are 15-18 million VND/month such as: welding, mechanics, electricity, electronics, hotel management, automotive technology...
According to the synthesis of schools, nearly 10% of graduates work in enterprises in the province and nearly 7% work in production and business establishments in the province. The number working in enterprises outside the province and abroad accounts for more than 30%. The remaining number, about 50%, creates jobs for themselves, continues to do the old job but with higher productivity and income.
Among the 53 vocational training institutions in Nghe An, the number of schools with fashion sewing majors is not small, including schools that only focused on technical aspects as before. The opening of this major is considered to meet the demand for labor in the province when in recent years dozens of garment enterprises have been opened in Nghe An, attracting a large number of local workers, especially female workers. Like this year's enrollment season, Viet Duc College (Vinh City) plans to increase the quota for the fashion sewing major, one of the majors that has been opened for about 3 years and has attracted quite a lot of students to participate...
However, in reality, the garment export industry has faced many difficulties in the past two years. At times, thousands of garment workers in the area were unemployed, had their working hours cut, and many businesses had to temporarily close. Vocational training in this industry has also been significantly affected.
Previously, in the period 2015 - 2020, Nghe An province merged 25 Vocational Training Centers and Continuing Education Centers into 12 Continuing Vocational Education Centers; renamed and added vocational education functions to 7 Continuing Vocational Education Centers into Continuing Vocational Education Centers. The province also dissolved 1 public secondary school, 2 non-public centers and transferred the state management function of vocational education of 1 college, 5 professional secondary schools from the Ministry of Education and Training to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs.
Although the vocational education system has been gradually reorganized and ineffective facilities have been dissolved to avoid overlap, objectively speaking, the network of vocational education facilities is still scattered, with overlapping functions and tasks, and the training fields between schools are quite similar. In recent years, fields such as welding, automotive technology, electricity, electronics, civil electricity, refrigeration and air conditioning engineering, and garments have developed quite well and almost all schools have opened these fields. The overlap between training fields has more or less made it difficult for schools to recruit students, especially at the lower-ranked schools. If there is no calculation and no full forecast of the future labor market, training saturation is very likely to happen.
The Provincial People's Committee's report on the assessment of 5 years of training and human resource development in Nghe An province in the period of 2015 - 2020 and up to 2022 also pointed out the limitations and shortcomings in training. That is, currently, vocational training enrollment is still facing difficulties; the structure of training enrollment levels still has many shortcomings (mainly primary and short-term training; college and intermediate levels only account for 18.27% of the total number of trained workers). In addition, the network of vocational training institutions is still scattered, with overlapping functions and tasks, and most of the enrollment scale is small. The number, structure, and occupations have not met the requirements of the labor market. Schools have not been able to open a number of new occupations that the labor market will have a high demand for in the coming time, such as logistics, mechatronics operations, industrial equipment system maintenance, and integrated network engineers.
Meanwhile, the quality of training has not been renewed and kept up with the trend. According to the monitoring report of the Provincial People's Council, currently in many vocational schools in the province, some training programs are not really flexible, not diverse, and not updated with new technology trends. Teaching knowledge and skills on labor law policies, basic foreign language proficiency, industrial work style, etc. has not received due attention, so graduates are weak and lack skills. Training of highly skilled workers to supply businesses and for labor export is still limited. Many businesses and professions need it but recruitment is facing many difficulties, especially businesses investing in the area that need workers who know Chinese and Korean; heavy, toxic industries and professions as well as specific industries and professions that require high talent such as art, sports, etc.
Faced with these shortcomings and inadequacies, re-planning the network of vocational schools is urgent for Nghe An province. The main task is to review the operational capacity, dissolve and merge a number of vocational training institutions that operate ineffectively and do not meet the prescribed conditions, in accordance with the actual situation of the locality. This is also to implement Plan No. 111/KH-TU and Project No. 09/DA-TU on reorganizing the apparatus, streamlining the payroll and restructuring the team of cadres, civil servants and public employees to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the provincial political system...
Recently, the Prime Minister also issued Decision No. 73/QD-TTg on the Planning of the vocational education network for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2045. Accordingly, the goal by 2025 is to reduce at least 20% of public vocational education institutions nationwide compared to 2020.
(To be continued)
