Besides increasing the number of universities,rasing the education quality is also urgent problem

The first course of the new school year which started two weeks ago brought eagernees and happiness for every students . After finishing the first year , we have grown up in both life and study . English exercises helped us to raise English skills. So we got good result in last course.

The first course of the new school year which started two weeks ago brought eagernees and happiness for every students After finishing the first year , we have grown up in both life and study English exercises helped us to raise English skills So

we got good result in last course In this course , we were charged an interesting exercise about social and economic problem These are practical problems which needs concernedness of every one in social On the occasion of new school year , we want to dicuss about education subject ,one of the most realistic problems in social

Though in the past few year the education sector has gianed some initial successes in raising the quality of teaching and learning standars , we stiil see qite a lot of problems across the sector.So,we searched and gathered much informations about education problem

We worked in group of four member Each person searched her own subject and wrote her own summary about that subject.After that , we worked togerther to dicuss about the realistic problem It was a really interesting exercise

Our group include four girl members We hope that our assignment wiilbe got good participation.We are:

Pham Thanh Huong

Pham Thi Thu Huong

Pham Thi Thu Hoa

Tran Thi Thu Hien

1.The Ministry of Education and Training and the Vietnam Education builed the campaign to help pupils in disadvantaged areas The campaign attracted teacher and students’ participation by collecting in dispensable things for study .It will last till Octorber, 2008

2.At ethnic minorities ,writing and speaking Vietnamese are too difficult for ethnic children to learn The Ministry of Education and Training encouraged one method that teachs Vietnamese to ethnic children at kindergarten school Childern can understand Vietnamese better after training course

3.A new campaign which called “Friendly school , active students” was built to reduce to the smallest possible number of drop-outs Besides, to concern oneself with the student’s living condition will help them to have chance of studying

4.Can newly-graduating engineers work as experience staffs? While business complain that graduates are only good in theory , universities against that business don’t welcome students to assigned them practical work However , one realistic sollution isn’t found by both business and universities

5.At “The School Year of Information and Technology Application”, delegates include experts , educators and officials dicussed about using ICT in education The number of internet users have increased in few near years Applying ICT in education will bring better educational environment for students around the country

6.More and more universities are founded and many problems are appearing.Universities lacks of good lucturers and facilities Deputy of Ministy MOET

said that qualification of lecturers must be up graded Besides increasing the number of

universities,rasing the education quality is also urgent problem.

7.Doctor Pham Thi Kim Anh , from Hanoi University recounted the bad attitude of students which is from poor education and upbringing.She gave the solution that needs co-ordination of teachers and parents in teaching life skills and fostering personalities.However,to improve the quality of teachers is also one more important problem

8.Books are so necessary for teachers and students But now teachers and students use Internet to search information and time Because school library is not enough to server people about quality, quantity and disversity , government should invest both books and skills of librarian.One more thing is that infrastructure in library need to modernise

9.High tuition fee is a big problem with majority of students However , to increase tuition fee is unavoidable Opinions of some students showed that they can’t effort to pay such as high tuition fee So, the government should have solutions to control this staus Universities also should find other financial sources to reduce the fee

10.In this new school year , the Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan introduced four new projects : kindergaten , system school , teacher’s quality and new structure.he also hoped that the number of student drop-outs will minimising.Besides, the ministry also encouraged teacher to change the method of teaching

1 - SUPPORTING STUDENTS IN DISADVANTAGED AREAS

The Ministry of Education an Training and the Vietnam Education Trade Union have called for support from the whole education sector to help pupils in mountainous , remote and poor areas, especially those in provinces hit by the recent floods

The campaign aims at to collect clothes , books , textbooks , learning tools and raise money to help the students in those areas

Currently, students in muontainous , remote and undeveloped areas , face many difficuties Some students in those regions lack warm clothes , books, textbooks and necessary learning tools In particular, the floods at the beginning of August caused great human suffering and property damage in several Northern Mountainous Provinces According to a report by Education Trade Union in Lao Cai , Yen Bai , Ha Giang , Phu Tho and Quang Ninh provinces , one teacher and 19 pupils dided or went missing in the flood , several houses belonging to teachers were destroyed , 89 teacher’s houses were heavily damaged , many classrooms were destroyed , hundreds of pupils lost clothes , books , textbooks and learning tools.All right before the new school year

To help pupils in disavantaged regions , especially in flood-hit areas, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Vietnam Education Trade Union have called for all teacher s , educational workers , student in economically advantaged areas , organizations , businesses and individuals to respone the campaign

The campaign will create better conditions for students in these regions in their material and spiritual lives and help them in their studies , said Nguyen Thien Nhan , Deputy Mininster and Minister of Education and Training.The campaign will be carried out from the beginning of this new school year till Octorber , 2008

2- BID TO BOOST ETHNIC PUPILS ‘ LITERACY

The move is expected to facilitate ethnic minority children’s learning as many of them still cannot read and write Vietnamese fluently after completing the first grade, despite the Ministry of Education and Training’s efforts at improving education in rural areas

For the school year 2007-08, 40 rural provinces recorded low rates of learning the Vietnamese language after the first grade, according to a report released at a recent conference held by the ministry

Nearly 22 per cent of students who had completed the first grade in northern Ha Giang Province could not read

or write Vietnamese, with 17 per cent in Dac Nong Province, 16.8 per cent in Gia Lai Province in the Central Highlands and 15.3 per cent in central Ninh Thuan.Nguyen Vinh Hien, deputy education minister, said textbooks, which are all in Vietnamese, and teaching methods were unsuited to ethnic minority students.Some academic content of the textbooks are too difficult, he said.Vietnam has 53 ethnic minorities with a population

of 11 million About 70 per cent of ethnic children cannot understand and speak Vietnamese before they attend primary school

The Ministry of Education and Training has told provinces and cities to use ethnic languages to teach Vietnamese to five-year old ethnic children at kindergarten schools or offer a two – to three-month Vietnamese training course for ethnic children before they enter the first grade.Using students’ ethnic languages to teach them in the first grade and both languages at primary school is one method encouraged by the ministry

Hoang Thu Huong, an official from the ministry’s pre-school education department, said the method of teaching Vietnamese to ethnic children in kindergarten had been successful in Gia Lai Province."Ethnic children who learn Vietnamese in kindergarten can follow the teaching curriculum of the first grade," Huong said.But many of the children did not attend school, she said

Ethnic children at a primary

school in A Pu Sung

Commune, Bat Xat District, in

the northern mountainous

province of Lao Cai, learn

Vietnamese

Mong Ky Slay, head of the ministry’s ethnic minority education department, said there was a shortage of teachers who can master their students’ ethnic languages

Using both languages had not been successful in general because classes can contain children from three to five ethnic minorities.The ministry would decide on one approach after surveying results in various provinces Nguyen Van Dong, head of the Gia Lai Province’s primary education, said provincial teacher training colleges should offer ethnic minority languages to teachers

Only five per cent of primary teachers nationwide are ethnic minorities

Tran Thi Tham, deputy director of the Lao Cai Province’s department of education and training, said teachers needed to learn the ethnic languages of their students.Lao Cai Province had also sent its teachers to Tay Bac University to learn the H’mong language, she said.Vietnam has only four universities – Tay Bac, Tay Nguyen, Quy Nhon and Can Tho – that teach ethnic minority languages

(Source: Viet Nam News)

3- SCHOOLS BRACE FOR AN EARLY START

While students nationwide are waiting for the first drum beat that officially starts the new school year, the education and training sector has set out new targets to improve schooling

Students and their parents look for necessary textbooks and

stationaries for the new coming school year

The new targets aim to eliminate manipulation of exam results, and to keep students

in school, reducing the number of drop-outs

Minister of Education and Training, Nguyen Thien Nhan, said the education sector should focus society's attention on the benefit of learning, to provide a favourable learning environment for students across the country

"I once visited Tra Vinh Province, and local authorities told me that poor families could not produce enough to eat without the help of their children, if we could provide them 10 kilos of rice a month, the children would not have to do farm work and could attend school," said Nhan, adding, "Some children have to travel great distances to go to school, we should provide transport to help them."

"We must help students in accordance with their own situation and local conditions," he said

In the 2008-09 school year, Nhan said the Ministry of Education and Training would launch a new campaign; "Friendly school, active students" The new campaign aims to develop clean and green schools, and will help teachers develop a creative curriculum where students can enjoy healthy activities in conjunction with school work

"Through the campaign, we believe that the number of students dropping out of schools will reduce next year," Nhan said

He noted that the Ministry would continue the fight against cheating in examinations by publishing information on localities where cheating is widespread.According to Nhan, 2008-09 school year will be a break-through year in terms of applying IT

(Source: Viet Nam News)

4- BUSINESSES THINK LITTLE OF TRAINING QUALITY

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, 45-62% of students can get jobs within three months after they graduate from university or college, and 90-100% of students can get jobs within two years

Only 60% of polled students said that they could find jobs related to the branch in which were trained, while 30% said that their jobs are not closely related to their specialty field, and the remaining 10% said they worked in completely different fields

Businesses complain that graduates lack a lot of skills necessary for work, like foreign language skills, informatics and soft skills

They said that students of the modern age prove to be dynamic and eager to learn, but they still have a lot of shortcomings Especially, they lack professional skills and get confused when applying knowledge in practice

According to Phan Tri Dung, Chairman of Petech Company, MOET believes that Vietnamese students are very good in theory and bad in practice However, Dung said that he does not agree with the viewpoint

It is true that Vietnamese graduates are not good in practice, but they are even worse in theory, Dung said A lot of companies which employ new graduates have to retrain students so they can carry out their jobs

Vietnamese students are very

good in theory and bad in

practice

According to statistics, only 20% of newly-graduating engineers can absorb such training programmes because their theoretic knowledge is far from sufficient Currently,

at universities, students learn only to pass tests and write graduate theses

Dung also said that graduates lack creativeness In order to prove this, he cited an example Vietnamese students always get high prizes at international competitions, but the number of inventions of Vietnamese students is 100 times lower than those of foreign students

5- ONLINE CONFERENCE URGES EDUCATION REFORM WITH ICT

Participants discussed issues related to

strengthening the application of Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) on education

and administration management as part of Decree

64, which was issued by the Government last year

Representatives from foreign companies and

international organisations shared the experiences

from other parts of the world.Delegates from

education agencies nationwide reported on their

progress, methods of incorporating ICT into the

pedagogy, and proposed changes to the project

How to use open source software for educational

purposes was also a hot topic

Following recent instructions from the ministry, educational agencies and departments will be equipped with ADSL so video conferences, web conferences and audio conference systems can be used to host online events for educators

Candidates attend the National Non-professional Information Technology (IT) Competition in the southern province of Can Tho The Government wants stronger IT usage in education and administration management

The ministry also called on its sub-divisions to provide email addresses with the domain name of their particular departments to facilitate management and training

This academic year, priority will go to seniors to be assigned email addresses with the department’s domain name to get graduation updates and vocational guidance Other ways to use open sources in education and e-learning were also brought up

The application of new ways of thinking about education in universities in HCM City and Ha Noi kickstarted a new vitality for education reform around the country One expert noted the concept of e-learning is by now familiar with Vietnamese educators

Using ICT in education now is fortuitous as the country’s number of internet users has shot up Some 15 million people are on line this year, according to a report from Vu Minh Tri, head of Yahoo! Southeast Asia’s representative office

In two years, that number will double Students account for 37 per cent of internet users in the country.The conference was transmitted to education and training departments across the country so that attendees would not need to host other meetings to disseminate information to their staff, said Quach Tuan Ngoc, head of the Department of Information and Technology under the Ministry of Education and Training

The development and application of ICT was an essential part of reforming the national education system, he said.The Government wiould foot the bill to train 30,000 principals and teachers to use ICT Meetings and trainings via satellite TV would also save money, he added

This year, the Ministry of Education and Training will organise contests for educators applying ICT to their teaching methodologies to encourage familiarisation with the new technology

(Source: VNS)