Hot stories about education in 2017

2017 has seen many exciting educational events taking place until the end of the year. Readers, let’s take a look back at some hot stories.

Vietnamese language improvements cause "shock"

Immediately after Thanh Nien Newspaper published part one (consonant part) of the research project on improving Vietnamese by Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hien, former Vice Principal of Hanoi University of Foreign Languages, on improving Vietnamese on November 24, 2017, a "wave" of controversy and strong reactions from society about this project took place strongly. This event continued to cause a "storm" in public opinion when on December 26, Associate Professor Hien continued to announce the proposal to improve the vowel part.

Painful problem of child abuse in preschools

At the end of November, the child abuse case by nannies at the private kindergarten Mam Xanh (District 12, Ho Chi Minh City) was unanimously condemned by society. Accordingly, nannies here had kicked, slapped the children on the head, in the face, used objects to beat, and even used kitchen knives to hit the children on the head. From this incident, leaders from central to local levels, authorities, related organizations... have taken specific actions to limit child abuse.

Alarm about the quality of education

The 2017 university and college entrance exams showed an imbalance between medical schools where people with 29 points were still not admitted, and many local teacher training schools with a total entrance standard of 9 points for 3 subjects! In response to public opinion, the Ministry of Education and Training has held many seminars to dissect the problem. The proposed solutions are to re-plan the teacher training school system, rebuild quotas according to usage needs and raise the entrance standard scores...

In the last month of 2017, public opinion once again stirred up about the pedagogical input when many opinions said that it was necessary to reconsider the policy of exempting tuition fees for students in this field because this policy no longer attracted good students to study. In the last days of the year, at the conference of principals of pedagogical schools, leaders of the Ministry of Education and Training affirmed that from 2018, the pedagogical quota must be closely linked to local needs and students entering the pedagogical field must be the most outstanding students.

The valedictorian went home to raise pigs and the problem of using talented people!

In early October 2017, Bui Thi Ha caused a stir on social media with the story of “the valedictorian of pig farming”. Ha graduated as valedictorian of Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 and returned to Ha Giang. After more than a year, she still hasn’t been able to teach, which surprised many people.

There are two streams of opinion surrounding this story. First, public opinion feels indignant because even a valedictorian is unemployed. However, the second stream of public opinion asks why a valedictorian is not proactive in finding a job, wasting 4 years of university knowledge? Many people think that Ha should change his thinking, whether it is a public or private school, a state agency or a non-state enterprise, as long as there is a job, young people should devote themselves to it, not waste time waiting.

This story raises concerns in public opinion about the issue of attracting and using talented people. Attracting talented people based only on qualifications, with little attention to actual capacity and local needs, makes many policies to attract talented people almost like a movement, without practical effectiveness. In addition, this is also an opportunity for everyone to reconsider the concept of what is talented people.

According to TNO