On the afternoon of November 4, continuing the 8th Session, the National Assembly continued to discuss the socio-economic situation.
Speaking at the meeting, delegate Lo Thi Luyen (Dien Bien delegation) said that the 2018 general education program has been implemented for nearly 4 years. However, the printing and distribution of textbooks still has many limitations.
According to the delegate, there are signs of vested interests and waste in the printing and distribution of exercise books. Up to 65% of textbooks have pages that students can write on directly and cannot be reused.
In addition, many localities have not yet been able to print and distribute local educational materials; students receive PDFs on their devices or print from PDFs themselves to study. Delegates said that the cause of the above problem is due to difficulties in determining copyright, price appraisal and bidding for printing and distribution.
This content was pointed out by the Supervisory Delegation of the National Assembly Standing Committee in 2019 and has not been resolved yet.
Delegates said that to remove difficulties and obstacles in printing and distributing educational materials, a simple process is needed for localities to implement.
If we continue to apply the regulations of the system of laws, decrees and circulars, we will not be able to resolve the difficulties and problems related to this content for many years to come.
At the meeting, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son clarified the opinions of delegates expressing concerns about the printing and distribution of textbooks with group interest issues.
The Minister said that in the past few years, the education sector has made many changes, and a few people involved in organizing illegal bidding for printing paper and publishing books have all been "arrested and taken away".
The Minister hopes that delegates will point out which groups are pursuing illegal interests so that the Ministry can coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security and the Procuracy to "arrest and take them away".
Regarding the bottlenecks with vocational and continuing education centers, Minister Nguyen Kim Son admitted that this is a real problem. This causes difficulties in management and improving training quality in the context of building a learning society and creating lifelong learning opportunities for people.
The Ministry of Education and Training is proposing to the Government to amend Decree 127 on the responsibility of State management of education, in which it considers which focal point and which department the continuing education and vocational education centers belong to, which is most reasonable.
"We are considering the option of transferring it to the Department of Education and Training for management, which may be more appropriate," said Minister Nguyen Kim Son, emphasizing that this is a big issue. In November 2024, the Ministry of Education and Training will organize a national conference for directors of continuing education and vocational education centers to exchange and listen to opinions.
According to Minister Nguyen Kim Son, students face great pressure when taking the 10th grade high school entrance exam. Many localities only prepare public school systems to meet about 70%. Therefore, when students' wishes grow larger, many problems will arise, causing stress for them in their choices.
According to statistics from 2021-2023, the rate of university students aged 18-22 in Vietnam is only 27.9-30%, equivalent to middle-income countries, much lower than other countries in the region.
Thus, the model of taking intermediate and primary training as the basis is gradually becoming unsuitable. The level of vocational training is gradually approaching that of university. The concept of teachers and workers in training high-quality human resources is getting closer to each other, making it difficult to distinguish between teachers and workers.
