RESOLUTION

ON “FUNDAMENTAL AND COMPREHENSIVE INNOVATION IN EDUCATION, SERVING INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MODERNIZATION IN A SOCIALIST-ORIENTED MARKET ECONOMY DURING INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION” RATIFIED IN THE 8^th SESSION.

A - Current condition and causes

1 - Education in Vietnam have achieved significant success and contributed to the development and protection of the country after a period of implementing the strategy for developing education during industrialization and modernization period of the Communist Party and the State.

In particular: A relatively complete education system, from pre-school to university, has been established. The infrastructure and equipment serving education have been improved and gradually modernized. The quantity of students increases rapidly, especially in universities and vocational schools. The education quality has improved to a certain degree. Both the quantity and quality of educators and administrative officers are increased with increasingly reasonable structure. Expenditure on education reaches 20% of the total government budget expenditure. Private sector involvement in education has been boosted; the non-public education system has contributed considerably to the overall education development. Education administration has experienced certain changes.

Illiteracy elimination and primary completion program was completed in 2000; secondary completion program was completed in 2010. The current target is preschool completion for children aged 5 and improving the result of illiteracy elimination for adults. Education is more accessible, especially to ethnic minorities and beneficiaries of incentive policies; gender equality in education is basically achieved.

The aforementioned achievements are on account of the traditional fondness for learning of Vietnamese, the consideration of the Communist Party, the Government, Vietnamese Fatherland Front, the whole society, the devotion of educators and administrative officers, the political stability, and socio-economic development of the country.

2 - However, the quality and effectiveness of education are still lower than expected, especially higher education and vocational education. The education system lacks continuity between levels and methods of education, and is rather theoretical than practical. The training not well associated with scientific research, manufacture, business, and demand of the labor market; education about ethics, lifestyles, and working skills are underestimated. The method of education, testing, and assessment are still obsolete and imprecise.

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Investment in education is not effective. Financial policies on education are not suitable. Educational facilities are insufficient and obsolete, especially in remote areas and impoverished areas.

3 - The aforementioned weaknesses are on account of:

- The enactment of the policies on education development of the Communist Party and the Government, especially the statement that “Education is the top priority” is still slow and tentative. The formulation and implementation of strategies, plans, and programs for development of education fail to meet the needs of the society.

- The targets of education are not proper understood. The inclination to formalities and false achievements, the overestimation of degrees are not eliminated, from some aspects even more serious. Conservative mentality still obstructs social resources from investing in education.

- State management and education administration in educational institutions are not noticeably separated. The quality control, inspection, and supervision are still underestimated. The cooperation between state agencies, social organizations and families are not close enough. The capacity of Vietnam and most families to invest in education is still much lower than expected.

B - Orientation for fundamental and comprehensive innovation in education

I - Viewpoints

1 - Education is the top priority, the cause of the Communist Party, the Government and the people. Investment in education means investment in development, and therefore put at the top in socio-economic development plans.

Fundamental and comprehensive changes in education means changes in major, pivotal, and imperative issues, such as viewpoints, contents, methods, policies, and conditions; changes in the leadership of the Communist Party, administration of the Government, administration of educational institutions, participation of families, the community, the society, and the learners themselves; changes in all levels and disciplines.

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3 - Development of education means raising the people’s awareness, training manpower, and cultivating the gifted. Transform education from knowledge provision to comprehensive development of learners in terms of capability and personal qualities. Associate learning with practicing; combine school education with familial education and social education.

4 - Associate education development with socio-economic development, national defense, science and technology advances. Convert education development from quantity-focused into quality-focused but still meet quantitative demand.

5 - Change the education system towards openness, flexibility, and connection between levels and methods. Standardize and modernize education.

6 - Utilize the advantages, overcome the disadvantages of market mechanism; ensure the orientation towards socialism in education development. Harmonize the development of public and non-public education, the education in various regions. Focus on investment in education development in impoverished areas, bordering areas, islands, remote areas, for ethnic minorities and beneficiaries of incentive policies. Encourage democracy and private sector involvement in education.

7 - Seek international cooperation in education development to meet the requirements for international integration.

II - Targets

1 - Overall targets

Make a fundamental and dramatic transformation in the quality and effective of education to serve the manufacture, protection of the country and the demand for study of the people. Enable Vietnamese to develop their potential and creativity, to love their families, their countries, and people, to live and work effectively.

Develop an open education system that is practical and effective in terms of teaching, learning, and administration, and associated with developing an educational society; satisfy the conditions for quality improvement; make the education system standardized, modern, and democratic; maintain the orientation of socialism and national characteristics. Vietnam’s education must reach an advanced level in the region by 2030.

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- Preschool education: help children develop their physical health, mental health, knowledge, and perception, go through the first stages of personality development; prepare children for primary education; ensure the primary completion at the age of 5 by 2015, improve the quality of primary completion in the next years and exempt tuition fees by 2020; step by step standardize the system of preschools. Ensure the quality of preschool education for children under the age of 5 is suitable for the conditions of each locality and educational institution.

- Secondary education: focus of the development of intelligence, physical health, the formation of personality and civil capability; find and cultivate the gifted; help students determine their careers. Improve the education quality comprehensively, focus on education about ideals, traditions, ethics, lifestyles, foreign languages, information technology, practical skills and ability to apply knowledge to life. Develop the creativity and ability of self-learning; encourage lifelong learning. Complete the secondary education program after 2015. Ensure that students graduated from junior high schools (after 9^th grade) have fundamental knowledge to meet the requirements after junior high school; high school students must be provided with vocational guidance and well prepared for post-high-school period. Raise the quality of compulsory education; 9-year education is compulsory from after 2020.

80% youngsters over 18 years of age must complete secondary education or equivalent by 2020.

- Vocational education: focus on training people that have knowledge, skills, and professional responsibility. Establish a system of vocational education with a wide variety of methods and levels towards practice and application, serving the demand for technical manpower of Vietnam’s and international labor markets.

- Higher education: focus on training skilled labour, cultivate the gifted, develop the learners’ personal qualities, creativity, and ability of self-learning. Complete the network of institutions of higher educations with occupational structure and training levels to suit the national manpower development plan, some of which reach the regional or international level. Diversify the training institutions to serve the requirements for development of technology and professions, requirements for national development and international integration.

- Continuing education: provide opportunities for everyone, especially those in rural areas, disadvantaged areas, and beneficiaries of incentive policies, to obtain knowledge, receive education, improve professional skills and life quality; enable workers to change their jobs; sustain the non-existence of illiteracy. Complete the network of continuing education institutions with a great diversity of learning activities, where flexibility, self-learning, and distance-learning are valued.

- Formulate a program to teach Vietnamese and Vietnamese culture to Vietnamese overseas to stimulate the love for their motherland, promote solidarity and amity with people in other countries

III - Tasks and solutions

1 - Enhance the leadership of the Communist Party and the State over innovation in education.

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Innovate the communication and propagation to create unanimity, encourage the participation of the whole society in assessing, supervising, and criticizing the innovation in education.

Value political education at school, first of all for the teachers. Internal communist organizations must be established in schools and universities. The communists in educational institutions must be role models and are responsible before the Communist Party and the people for the accomplishments of educational targets. School officers must support democracy, emphasize the role of associations and local people in building the school.

Ministries, governing bodies and local governments shall formulate long-term plans for manpower development, forecast the demand for manpower in terms of quantity, quality, and occupational structure; cooperate with educational institutions to implement such plans accordingly.

Mobilize the entire political system to eliminate the prolonged misconducts in education that trouble the society.

2 - Keep making dramatic and comprehensive changes in fundamental elements of education towards valuing learners’ capacity and personal qualities.

The targets, standards of every level, subject, program, and discipline must be determined based on the targets of innovation in education. They are the guarantee of quality of the whole system and every educational institution, the basis for supervising and assessing education quality.

Innovation in education programs is to raise the capacity and personal qualities of learner in every aspect. Change the education contents towards simplification and modernism which suit the learners’ ages, education, and occupations; increase practice and application of knowledge to real life. Focus on education about personality, ethics, lifestyle, law, and citizen’s awareness. Focus on fundamental values of culture, traditional customs and morality, human culture, core values and humanity in Marxism and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology. Enhance physical education, provision of knowledge about national defense and security, and career guidance. Teach foreign languages and information technology practically to improve the ability of learners. Pay attention to teaching languages of ethnic minorities; teach Vietnamese language and Vietnamese culture to Vietnamese overseas.

Diversify the contents of learning materials to meet requirements of all levels, educational programs, and the need for lifelong learning of everyone.

Keep radically changing the teaching and learning methods towards modernism; encourage the learners’ independence, creativity, and application of knowledge; avoid imposition of knowledge, passive learning, rigid memorization. Focus of teaching learning and thinking methods, encourage and enable the learners to update knowledge themselves, improve their intellect, skills, and capacity. Diversify the methods of learning, focus of social activities, extra-curricular activities, and scientific research. Intensify application of information technology and telecommunication to teaching and learning.

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Formulate and standardize compulsory education programs towards modernism and simplification; knowledge is more general in lower grades and more specialized in upper grades; reduce the number of compulsory subject; increase the number of subjects, topics, and educational activities. Compile textbooks, teaching and learning materials that suit corresponding learners; pay attention to students that belong to ethnic minorities and handicapped students.

Develop vocational education programs towards accumulation of knowledge, skills, and professional manner of learners.

Radically change higher education and postgraduate education programs towards modernism to suit every discipline and facilitate the stratification of the higher education system. Focus on development of creativity, practical skills, professional ethics, and understanding of the society; step by step approach the advanced science and technology of the world.

3 - Fundamentally change the method of examination and assessment of education results to ensure truthfulness and objectivity.

Examination and assessment of education results must adhere to the criteria recognized by the society and education community in the world. Combine evaluation during the learning process with final examinations; combine teachers’ assessment with learner’s assessment; combine assessment by the school with assessment by families and society.

Innovate the method of examination and certification of secondary completion towards reduction of pressure and expenses while ensuring reliability and truthful evaluation of students, as a basis for admission to vocational schools, colleges and universities.

Change the method of assessing and recognizing vocational education completion based on knowledge, practical skills, discipline, and professional ethics. Enable employers to participate in evaluation of training institution quality.

Change the method of college and university admission towards combination of entrance exams and school records, and satisfying requirements of the disciplines. Assess higher education results by focusing on analytical ability, creativity, self-learning ability, professional ethics, research and application of science and technology, technical skills, organization ability and adaptability with working environments. Allow institutions of higher education to organize admission independently.

Assess education quality of the whole country, each locality, and educational institutions based on international programs as a basis for proposal of solutions for improving education quality.

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Change the method of employing changed workers; focus on their capacity, quality, and productivity without excess importance attached to their qualifications, especially in the agencies of the political systems. Consider employers’ acknowledgement of learners’ ability an important criterion for assessing the quality of a vocational school or an institution of higher education, and is a basis for planning the development of educational institutions and their disciplines.

4 - Complete the national education system towards openness, lifelong learning, and building a learning society.

Sustain the stability of the compulsory education system in the short-term. Intensify differentiation after junior high school and career guidance in high school. Keep changing the compulsory education system to suit Vietnam’s conditions and development tendency of the world’s education.

Rearrange the network of institutions of vocational education and institutions of higher education associated with socio-economic development and manpower development. Choose uniform names of training levels and qualifications. Intensify post-secondary vocational education and connection between vocational education and higher education. Keep arranging and adjusting the network of universities, colleges, and research institutes towards associating training with scientific research. Keep differentiating institutions of higher education towards research, application and practice. Complete the model of national universities and local universities; fortify and develop some institutions of higher education and institutions of vocational education to reach regional and international levels.

Encourage private sector involvement in building and developing high-quality at all levels. Increase the rate of non-public vocational education and higher education institutions, especially educational institutions invested by the community.

Diversify training methods. Provide credit-based tanning. Enhance training in practical skills at business establishments. Enable employers to participate in the developing, adjusting, running training programs, and assessing learners’ ability.

5 - Fundamentally change education administration; ensure democracy and uniformity; enhance autonomy and responsibility of educational institutions; value quality management.

Identify the responsibility of state management authorities in charge of education. Separate state management from administration of educational institutions. Enhance decentralization, raise the sense of responsibility; encourage the independence and creativity of educational institutions.

Improve the effectiveness of state management of education programs and quality of foreign educational institutions in Vietnam. Promote the role of information technology and science and technology advances in state management of education.

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Standardize the quality assurance conditions and education administration; focus on graduation quality. Develop an independent system for assessing education quality.

Change the mechanism for receiving and processing information about education. Enable learners to participate in assessing education activities; enable educators to participate in assessing administrative officers; enable educational institutions to participate in assessing state management authorities.

Complete the policies on administration of foreign educational institutions in Vietnam, administration of overseas Vietnamese students funded by government budget.

Grant autonomy to educational institutions; emphasize the role of school councils. Supervise entities in school and in the society; enhance inspection; ensure democracy and openness.

6 - Improve the quality of educators and administrative officers to meet the requirements for innovation in education.

Formulate plans for training educators and administrative officers in association with socio-economic development and international integration. Standardize educators by level. Every teacher in primary schools, junior high schools, every teacher and lecturer in institutions of vocational education must hold at least a bachelor’s degree and has pedagogical skills. Every lecturer in colleges and universities must hold at least a master’s degree and is trained in pedagogical skills. Administrative officers must be trained in administrative skills.

Develop a system of pedagogy schools to provide training for educators and administrative officers; focus on the key pedagogy schools and technical education institutions; eliminate the dispersal of pedagogy schools Pedagogy schools must have separate policies on admission to recruit qualified educators.

Dramatically change the contents and methods of training and assessing educators to raise their quality, sense of responsibility, ethics and professional skills.

Provide incentives for educators and administrative officers. Educators and administrative officers must be employed, treated, and celebrated based on their capacity, professional ethics, and effectiveness. Provide incentives and retirement benefits of accomplished educators; discharge or reassign unqualified people that failed to fulfill their duties. Wages of educators must be at the top among officials; allowances shall be given depending on the works and location.

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Implement solutions for connection between training institutions, especially between universities and research institutes.

7 - Change financial policies, encourage the contribution of the whole society; raise investment effectiveness to develop education.

The State plays a pivotal role in investment in education development; government expenditure on education must reach at least 20% of the total budget; focus on improving the effectiveness of state capital. Gradually provide sufficient budget for professional activities of public educational institutions. Complete the policies on tuition fees.

Preschool education and compulsory education: the State shall focus on investing in the development of public educational institutions and provide support to achieve the targets. Encourage the development of non-public schools to satisfy demands for high-quality education in urban areas.

Higher education and vocational training: the State shall focus on investment in building some universities that provide training in key disciplines, and technical education universities. Set targets based on economic-technical norms and quality standards of education services (regardless of types of training institutions); ensure proportional payment for the quality. Disclose information about educational association and use of public resources; ensure harmony between the benefits and reinvestment.

Intensify private sector involvement, especially in vocational education and higher education; encourage cooperation with reputable foreign training institutions. Encourage healthy competition in education on be basis of preserving the benefits of learners, employers and educational institutions. If the discipline is likely to be invested by private sector, the government support shall only be provided for beneficiaries of incentive policies, ethnic minorities, and the gifted. Ensure the equality of opportunity to be supported by the State of learners in public schools and non-public schools. Keep completing the policies on supporting beneficiaries of incentive policies, ethnic minorities, and the policies on granting credit to students that suffer financial hardship. Encourage the establishment of scholarship funds to support brilliant but poor students. Celebrate and commend the individuals or groups that have outstanding achievements and remarkable contribution to education.

Encourage employers to support training activities. Introduce financial polices that are suitable for various types of schools. Provide preferential credit policies for educational institutions. Carry out periodic audit at educational institutions.

Keep reinforcing schools and classrooms; introduce supportive policies to make more space for schools. Keep modernizing the facilities, especially ones for information technology. Ensure that the quantity of students per class do not exceed permissible limits by 2020.

Separate government budget for preschool education, compulsory education, vocational education, and higher education from budget for training institutions that belong to the political system and the armed forces. Openly and strictly supervise the use of budget.

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Pay attention to research into education and administration; focus on investment in raising the capacity, quality, and effectiveness of national research institutes. Raise the quality of researchers and experts in education. Run national programs for education research.

Improve the capacity, raise the quality and effectiveness of scientific research and technology transfers in institutions of higher education. Combine training and research, connect training institutions and business establishments. Prioritize the development of fundamental science, crucial science, key laboratories, specialized laboratories, high technology centers, and modern experimental facilities in some institutions of higher education. Introduce policies on encouraging students to do scientific research.

Encourage the establishment of research institutes, technology transfer centers, and science and technology companies; support the registration and application of inventions in training institutions. Complete the policies on setting targets and allocating budget for science and technology research to institutions of higher education. Consider merging some scientific research and technology application institutes with public universities.

Focus on investment and introduce special policies to raise some universities that engage in multiple disciplines to regional and international levels in order to cooperate and compete with world’s top training institutions and research institutions.

9 - Seek international cooperation in education and raise its effectiveness

Seek international cooperation in education, conserve the independence and sovereignty, the orientation of socialism, fine cultural traditions; selectively adopt science and technology advances of mankind. Complete the policies on bilateral and multilateral cooperation; adhere to international agreements on education.

Provide more overseas training funded by government budget for lecturers of fundamental science and important disciplines. Encourage overseas study and research from other sources than government budget. Expand educational association with reputable foreign training institutions, primarily in higher education and vocational education; strictly supervise training quality.

Introduce policies on encouraging international organizations, foreigners, and Vietnamese overseas to participate in training, research, application, and transfer of science and technology in Vietnam. Intensify cultural and academic exchange.

Introduce policies on supporting, monitoring the study of Vietnamese students overseas and in foreign educational institutions in Vietnam.

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1 - Communist agencies, Vietnamese Fatherland Front, and the whole society are responsible for the implementation of this Resolution. The authorities must strengthen the education administration apparatus; regularly inspect political works and discipline in school; eliminate misconducts in education.

The National Assembly shall direct the revision and new promulgation of laws on education to create a legal environment for implementation.

3 - The Government shall direct the revision and new promulgation of lower legislative documents. Regularly supervise and assess the implementation to adjust the plans and solutions to real conditions, ensure effective implementation of this Resolution.

A National Education Innovation Council shall be established, the president of which is the Prime Minister.

4 - The Central Propagation Agency shall cooperate with communist agencies to monitor and assess the implementation of this Resolution, send periodic reports on the implementation of this Resolution to Poliburo and Secretariat./.

SECRETARY GENERAL




Nguyen Phu Trong