Student streaming for career guidance and vocational training: Need for synchronous and drastic solutions

(Baonghean) - Implementing the policy of streaming secondary school students of the Ministry of Education and Training, in recent years, the province has deployed many solutions and achieved some quite positive results. However, the practice of streaming for career guidance and vocational training still has some problems that need to be resolved.

Initial results

Implementing the student streaming policy, since 2010, the province has directed the implementation quite seriously. In Vinh City, for the past 3 years, once a year, the city invites representatives of local authorities, secondary schools and vocational schools to implement streaming in combination with some tasks of the school year. After the results of the first semester, the education sector directs secondary schools to orient 9th grade students who wish to study vocational training. Le Loi Secondary School has implemented the streaming policy quite systematically.

Mr. Vo Hoang Ngoc, the school's principal, said: Along with mobilizing the government's participation and propagating to every neighborhood, the school invites vocational school teachers to advise and introduce careers to students; regularly organizes meetings and exchanges with parents and students. For the past 2 years, the school has organized for students to go to the city's vocational school to visit the factory, listen to introductions about promising careers that will help students find stable jobs for them to choose from. With synchronous solutions, on average each year, Vinh City has been able to stream 195 - 250 students, reaching 9%.

Students of Bac Nghe An Vocational College get acquainted with industrial electrical vocational training equipment.

In Quynh Luu, with the advantage of having Bac Nghe An Vocational College located in the area along with quite synchronous implementation solutions, each year the district can stream 800 students into vocational schools, reaching 20%. On the side of vocational schools, in addition to directly recruiting and advising students according to the plan and quota, they also assign staff to closely coordinate with the Department of Education to closely follow the streaming plan to mobilize students to study. One of the schools that does a good job of recruiting and orienting students is Yen Thanh Industrial and Agricultural Vocational College. Due to close cooperation with secondary schools in advising students on streaming, the school has recruited enough and exceeded its quota every year. This school year, while other schools are "struggling" with the input problem, the school has recruited 260/240 quotas. Mr. Tran Van Tuan, Principal, said: Along with doing a good job of recruiting students, the school focuses on improving the quality of vocational training, so it attracts many students to register.

Statistics show that from 2010 to 2015, in the province, 20% of students after graduating from junior high school were classified into professional and vocational high schools.

Difficulties to overcome

The most obvious thing is that the results of student streaming have not yet met the requirements. According to the orientation of the Ministry of Education and Training as well as the Plan of the Provincial People's Committee, by 2020, the target is for 30% of junior high school graduates to be streamed to vocational training, and 70% of students to study in high school; accordingly, the annual enrollment target for high school will decrease by 5%. However, based on the results of streaming implementation in the past, many experts believe that achieving the above streaming target is extremely difficult. A closer analysis of the indicators shows that while the rate of students taking the high school entrance exam has not decreased, the rate of students taking the vocational school entrance exam (after streaming) tends to decrease gradually.

The reason why streaming is not really effective and vocational training is not the solution to "establish oneself and build a career" for students is because of the mentality of preferring to be a teacher rather than a worker. Besides, it is worth noting that some vocational schools are still in a state of lack of equipment and inadequate capacity of teaching staff, so the quality of training is not high; students after studying are not able to practice their profession; schools have not strived to train the professions that society needs, so they cannot attract students.

Because the stream is not thorough, the entrance exam of vocational schools is quite difficult. The principal of Bac Nghe An Vocational College, Mr. Nguyen Van Tai, said: In previous years, the entrance exam was difficult, now it is even more difficult because private and non-public high schools are allowed to consider admission if they do not meet the quota. In a similar situation, Mr. Le Hung Cuong, Vice Principal of Nghe An Ethnic Boarding Vocational College, said: "We are located in Con Cuong, the school is recruiting students from several mountainous districts, but up to this point, there are very few applications for vocational training."

On average, each year, our province trains about 10,000 students from elementary to intermediate and college levels, so it can be affirmed that the opportunity to become skilled workers is always open to students. In fact, while many university graduates cannot find jobs and are wasteful, vocational students can find jobs and earn income early, and many hardworking and creative students have even become owners of production and business establishments.

Mr. Nguyen Duy Nam, Principal of Vietnam - Korea Vocational College of Technology, said: Every year, the school recruits over 1,000 students, accounting for 10% of the vocational training quota in the province. According to statistics, 85 - 90% of the school's students have jobs after graduation, with an average income of 6 - 8 million VND/month. To improve the quality of training and find job opportunities for students, recently, in addition to training human resources to prepare for labor export, the school has also trained workers for large industrial parks such as Formousa (Ha Tinh), workers for Laos... With quite modern vocational training equipment, the school also cooperates with businesses to train at the address or retrain and improve workers' skills.

According to the Law on Vocational Education, from June 2015, vocational students will enjoy many incentives in tuition fee exemptions. Along with a series of large industrial investment projects in the province, the province's demand for technical human resources in the coming time will certainly be very large. This is an opportunity for workers after vocational training to find jobs and income. However, based on the practical direction of the streamlining work, Ms. Hoang Phuong Thao, Deputy Head of the Vinh City Education Department, said: In order for the streamlining results to be stable and on schedule, the province needs to have more synchronous and drastic plans and solutions.

Along with actively propagating to change social awareness and especially parents, the education sector needs to be bold and decisive in allocating quotas, rearranging the planning of the high school network for the purpose of student streaming; soon merging district-level continuing education centers with vocational secondary schools to focus resources on vocational training; the labor sector needs to advise on increasing investment levels for vocational training, directing schools to actively innovate programs, practice equipment, improve facilities, and the quality of vocational teachers; calling for the cooperation and association of businesses and society in vocational training to attract, employ and honor skilled workers... Thereby changing students' awareness in choosing a career to establish themselves and their careers. Another important factor is that vocational schools must transform to train the professions that the market needs; At the same time, closely follow the economic development orientation of the province to build strategies and human resource training plans suitable to the conditions of the enterprise.

Nguyen Hai