On the morning of August 13, the National Assembly Standing Committee gave its opinion on the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Education.
Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son presented a report on the main contents related to amending and supplementing the draft law.
In particular, the amended draft law assigns the head of a specialized agency under the provincial People's Committee to decide on the selection of textbooks.
Assign specialized agencies under the provincial People's Committee to organize the compilation of local educational documents, the provincial appraisal council to appraise and the provincial People's Committee to approve local educational documents to enhance the responsibility of state management of the locality in organizing the implementation of general education programs.
The Minister of Education and Training prescribes the Provincial Education Document Appraisal Council and technical standards for local educational documents.
The draft law clearly defines " textbooks" and "local educational materials" to overcome practical problems in evaluating textbooks according to the provisions of the Price Law.
The draft law also decentralizes from the provincial People's Committee to the Department of Education and Training, the director of the Department of Education and Training to decide on the selection of textbooks for stable use in general education institutions in the area and organizes the compilation of local educational documents.
After the preliminary review, Chairman of the Committee on Culture and Society Nguyen Dac Vinh stated that the Standing Committee of the Committee proposed that the drafting agency study in the direction of having a shared textbook set, and at the same time, there may be other textbooks as reference documents.
According to Mr. Vinh, it is necessary to gradually study the exemption of textbooks for students.
Regarding the organization of compilation, appraisal and transfer of authority to approve local educational documents, the Standing Committee of the Committee agreed with the provisions of the draft law amending regulations on the authority to compile and appraise local educational documents in the direction of assigning the organization of compilation to the professional agency under the Provincial People's Committee; the appraisal council at the provincial level for appraisal.
Transfer the authority to approve local educational documents from the Minister of Education and Training to the authority of the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee.
Giving his later opinion on the content related to textbooks, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Khac Dinh said that there must be a general set of general textbooks compiled by the Ministry of Education and Training.
According to the Vice Chairman of the National Assembly, this content has a monitoring topic of the National Assembly Standing Committee on the implementation of Resolution 88 2014 and Resolution 51/2017 of the National Assembly on innovating general education curriculum and textbooks.
At the same time, this is also in line with the spirit of Resolution 88, which states that there must be a common set of general textbooks issued by the Editorial Board, in addition to many other ministries.
The Vice Chairman of the National Assembly emphasized that a program with many sets of books is decided by the Central Government. When teaching, there are very specific regulations on which book sets to choose.
"The world has billions of English textbooks, who can choose any set, but a school always has its own set. Every country has a set of state books, while the state plays a key role in its own country" - Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Khac Dinh added.
