Education - the foundation of human resources
Resolution No. 71-NQ/TW (NQ71), dated August 22, 2025 of the Politburo on breakthroughs in education and training development has clearly established education as a top national policy, playing a key role in the country's rapid and sustainable development strategy, closely linked to the goal of building high-quality human resources and improving national competitiveness.
A core point of Resolution 71 is the unified mindset of considering investment in education not as pure welfare spending, but as development investment. Education is identified as the direct foundation of economic growth, determining labor productivity, innovation capacity and Vietnam's position in the knowledge economy and international integration.
The Resolution emphasizes that education development must be closely linked to comprehensive human development, considering people as both a goal and a driving force for sustainable development. Educational quality therefore becomes a decisive factor in human resource quality, thereby determining the quality of growth and long-term competitiveness of the economy.
Regarding resources, Resolution 71 affirms the State's responsibility in prioritizing investment in education, ensuring a high proportion of budget expenditure for education, and at the same time innovating the mechanism for allocating and using resources in an efficient direction, linking investment with quality and output results. This is a fundamental requirement to overcome the situation of scattered investment, lack of focus, and not closely linked to training quality.
A consistent content of the Resolution is the requirement to improve the quality of education, considering this a key stage for education to truly become a driving force for development. Education must strongly shift from knowledge transmission to developing capacity, skills, creative thinking and lifelong learning ability, meeting the requirements of the labor market and the scientific and technological revolution.
In the context of increasingly fierce international competition, NQ71 affirms that education is a decisive factor in improving national competitiveness.A high-quality education system will create an advantage for Vietnam in attracting investment, developing science and technology and deeply participating in the global value chain.
With a long-term vision, NQ71 not only solves immediate problems of the education system, but also lays the foundation for a national development strategy based on people, towards building a modern, integrated, high-quality Vietnamese education system, meeting the aspiration to develop a powerful and prosperous country in the middle of the 21st century.
Healthcare - improving productivity and quality of life
Parallel to education, Resolution No. 72-NQ/TW (NQ72) on "Some solutions to strengthen the protection, care and improvement of people's health in the new situation" continues to affirm an important shift in thinking: Healthcare is not only a field of treatment, but must proactively prevent diseases early; not only social costs, but also investment in labor productivity and human resource quality.
The Resolution clearly defines: People's health is the center, the goal and also the driving force of national development. Specific goals on average life expectancy, number of years of healthy living to 2030 and vision 2045 are not only statistical, but directly reflect the quality of life, health and labor capacity of tens of millions of people.
A prominent highlight of Resolution 72 is the identification of science, technology and innovation as the main driving force for building a modern, self-reliant and integrated Vietnamese healthcare. Prioritizing research and production of drugs, vaccines, biological products and high-tech medical equipment, towards forming a national pharmaceutical industrial park by 2030, not only serving healthcare but also opening up directions for the development of a high-tech economic sector.
Reality shows that Vietnam has been and is mastering many modern medical techniques such as domestic vaccine production, applying gene technology in cancer treatment, deploying specialized resuscitation techniques, advanced endoscopic surgery, and robotic surgery. These advances contribute to reducing treatment costs, helping people, especially workers, access high-quality medical services right in the country.
Digital transformation is identified by NQ72 as a strategic breakthrough in people's health care. Building a national health database, electronic health records, electronic medical records, electronic prescriptions and health insurance connections will help save time, costs, improve management efficiency and quality of health services, especially for people in remote and isolated areas.
The Resolution also emphasizes promoting the strengths of traditional medicine associated with modern science and technology, through digitizing remedies, building a database of medicinal herbs and traceability, opening up directions for sustainable medicinal herb economic development.
In particular, Resolution 72 affirms that people are the decisive factor for the success of all healthcare reforms. Training, treating and developing a team of doctors with expertise, ethics and technological capacity, especially at the grassroots level and in difficult areas, is identified as a key task.
Overall, Resolution 71 and 72 are not only orientations for the two fields of education and health, but together form an important pillar of a new growth model - a development model based on people, knowledge and health.
When education creates high-quality human resources and healthcare ensures a healthy labor force, Vietnam will have a solid foundation for rapid, sustainable growth and improve national competitiveness in the new development stage.
