HÀ NỘI — The government targets to provide vocational training to 2.2 million people in 2018 to meet the increasing demand for human resources, according to the Directorate of Vocational Education under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Vocational training over the past years has received encouraging results, with over 70 per cent trainees having found jobs after graduation, according to Lê Quân, Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

These trainees get an average salary of VNĐ7-10 million (US$310-400), Quân told the media at a recent press briefing.

These achievements have helped raise public awareness on the importance of vocational training, and many families have supported their children to undergo training as an option to quickly join the labour market, he said.

Nguyễn Ngọc Linh, who hails from Hai Bà Trưng District, said although she had graduated from the university with specialisation in English, she still decided to attend a six-month vocational training course.

“I think it is important to learn vocational skills to find a good job. I am studying a course on hotel management where I have learnt a lot of new things and new skills, which will help me to find a job easily,” she said.

However, shortcomings remain in vocational training, such as low training quality of some institutions, failure to meet the human resources demand of specific sectors and industries as well as lack of economic reforms, Quân said.

He noted incompetence in foreign language, lack of soft skills of vocational trainees and slow renewal of public vocational training institutions were some of the other challenges. 

Minister Đào Ngọc Dung shared the same view and said the training quality of vocational education was low, failing to meet the demand of businesses and society.

He said the main target of vocational education should be to improve the quality of human resources, particularly when the fourth Industrial Revolution was underway in the country. Therefore, vocational training should focus on strengthening the linkages between training institutions and enterprises to meet labour market demands, building standards for vocational education and having in place a supervision and assessment mechanism, he said.

Quân said promoting the application of information technology was necessary. The ministry plans to launch a vocational training application on mobile phones in May to help trainees know more about training programmes, training institutions and employment opportunities.

The ministry is piloting a programme to provide joint vocational training with many businesses to meet their real demand, and the programme has yielded positive results. 

Phạm Vũ Quốc Bình, Director of the Việt Nam Vocational Training Accreditation Agency, said at a recent conference on vocational training cooperation between Việt Nam and the United Kingdom that the rapid development of the fourth Industrial Revolution was posing numerous challenges for Việt Nam’s economy.

To have high-quality human resources, Việt Nam needed to build an open and modern occupational education system, he said.

According to Bình, businesses should play a leading role in occupational education and participate in several stages, such as defining training demand, increasing the quality of student-centric training and building quality training system.

There are currently more than 1,900 vocational training establishments across Việt Nam, including 395 colleges and 545 vocational schools. They offer programmes in various sectors, including tourism, beauty services, IT, construction, fashion, garment and textiles, pharmaceuticals, precision mechanics and hotel management. — VNS