HCM City has sought complete autonomy over its educational system, listing several things it wants to do at a meeting with Minister for Education and Training Phùng Xuân Nhạ yesterday.— Photo thanhnien.vn

HCM CITY – HCM City has sought complete autonomy over its educational system, listing several things it wants to do at a meeting with Minister for Education and Training Phùng Xuân Nhạ yesterday. 

The director of the city’s Department of Training and Investment, Lê Hồng Sơn, said the ministry should allow the city to create its own curricula and textbooks based on the national curriculum and appropriate for the city’s development.

State-run colleges and vocational schools should be made autonomous so that they can make decisions related to their curriculum, import of advanced training programmes from other countries, and tuition fees and enrollment targets, he said.

Sơn asked for a merger of vocational education management agencies, which are now managed by two departments: education and training and labour, invalids and social affairs.

The Ministry of Education and Training should issue directives to school teachers to work at community education centres in HCM City, Sơn said.

HCM City’s proposal to ensure a minimum space of two square metres for each student at the general education level should be seriously considered by the education ministry, he said.          

The city wants the legal framework to manage foreign-owned schools and overseas study consulting centres to be strengthened.

The rising population has led to an increase in enrolment in the city’s schools, with authorities reporting an a increase of 65,000 students a year, rising to 85,000 last year.

Nearly 3,000 new classrooms are needed now.

Đinh La Thăng, Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee, told the meeting that if the system succeeds in HCM City, a large city with a population of 13 million, it would also be successful in other places.

HCM City’s education system must be in the vanguard of the integration process, the Tuổi Trẻ (Youth) newspaper quoted him as saying.

"The country is integrating and its education system must adapt to the norms and laws of the market economy," he said.

“Private tuitions, private lessons must be eliminated.

“Though they do not offer private tuitions, international schools have trained talented students. Despite high tuition fees, these international schools manage big enrollments.”

Nguyễn Thành Phong, Chairman of the city People’s Committee, said planning for development of the education system must factor in global integration and infrastructure should be of international standard.

Education minister Nhạ said loopholes in the educational system were the major reason for the problems it faces.

HCM City should draft a master plan for its education system with all the problems it faces for until 2020, he said.

“We have supported the plan to relocate HCM City’s universities to suburban districts,” the minister added. — VNS