The Ministry of Education plans to cut down admission quota for teacher training universities to prevent unemployment and to improve the quality of teaching staff.

Ministry of Education to cut down admission quota for teacher training universities

Official document was sent to all localities on May 23. The ministry asked to cut admission quotas for parts of the economy where there was low employment demand.

The education sector was asked to continue cutting admission quotas depending on the quality and size of the institutions. The move aims to switch focus from quantity to the quality of teachers in Vietnam. The Ministry of Education issued Circular 32 last December stating that quotas needed to be cut by at least 10%.

On May 17, rector of Hanoi Metropolitan University Bui Van Quan raised concerns about the matter at a conference on teacher training. According to Quan, Vietnam has 108 education facilities to train teachers for kindergarten and basic education. Excluding Dak Nong Province, each province and city has at least one facility in their area.

Quan suggested the system was showing its weaknesses as many training facilities were lacking in both facilities and quality of training. There are about 19,200 primary teaching graduates, 18,700 secondary teaching graduates and 23,030 high school teaching graduates joining the jobs market each year and by 2020, Vietnam would have 70,000 unemployed teachers, Quan predicted.

He suggested redesigning training courses and re-examine the purpose and function of training institutions.

Pham Van Dai, vice director of Hanoi Department of Education and Training, said the capital had over 100,000 teachers. But there were few outstanding teachers to train or to lead new teaching programmes.

Dr. Nguyen Manh An from Hong Duc University agreed and said that government should have policies to attract outstanding students to the education sector as most students want to pursuit degrees in other sectors. Few students were interested in teaching due to poor pay and conditions.