Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung last Sunday urged the educational sector to continue management and finance reforms to improve education quality.
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| Students learn to use the internet at Ly Tu Trong School in southern Can Tho. |
In a two-day conference reviewing the activities of the four-year education-quality campaign, Dung noted that inspections and assessment of schools and teachers must be improved.
He added that quality teaching staff and up-to-date training methods and curricula were also required for education and training departments.
The PM also told local authorities to improve the quality of foreign language instruction and to continue investing in schools.
In the 2011-2012 school year, high school education should provide basic knowledge as well as practical job skills to students, he added.
Dung said the scale of the campaign was limited and had not yet expanded to tertiary-level education.
One of the major problems is the inflation of grades so the teacher can achieve a targeted pass rate at the end of the term.
The education campaign is asking teachers to not inflate grades for undeserving students.
Despite the recurring problems, the campaign had been a step in the right direction for stable education development, Dung said.
Deputy Minister of Education and Training Tran Quang Quy said that ethical violations among teachers had fallen four years after the implementation of the campaign.
The number of drop-outs and students with poor learning results declined from 148,082 in the 2006-2007 school year to 75,691 in the 2009-2010 school year.
In the last three years, nearly 80,000 classrooms and 22,000 rooms for teachers who teach in rural areas were built throughout the country.
Since 2006, 2,673 teachers have received the People\'s Teacher and Excellent Teacher awards.
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan said that there were abnormally high grades on the 2010-2011 high school graduation exams in some provinces.
For example, the rate of students who passed the exam in the Cuu Long (Mekong) River Delta and some northern mountainous provinces increased nearly 26 percent compared to previous school year\'s examination.
In addition, in 16 provinces and cities, more students are passing at the continuing-education level than at high school.
Nhan said the students studying at the continuing education level were under.
He asked the provinces and cities with this rate to review the results and ordered the Ministry of Education and Training to check exam papers again and publicise the results, as well as report to the Prime Minister by the beginning of the new school year.
The ministry will impose stiff punishment on provinces and cities that violate standards.
He asked localities to build a sufficient number of schools and rooms by 2012 for teachers who move to rural areas to teach.
The ministry should encourage schools to change teaching methods, especially the use of IT, and make an effort to equip every teacher with a computer by 2015, Nhan added.
Currently, the Government was considering a project to provide loans for teachers to buy computers, he said.
Nhan also said the education sector must develop a programme to help poor students and others in rural and mountainous areas go to school.
At the conference, Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan said that one of the most important tasks in the 2011-12 school year will be to reduce the content of textbooks, as proposed by scholars, teachers and administrators.
