Viet Nam’s education sector has been ordered to shape up and improve its public image. — Photo dantri.com.vn

HÀ NỘI – Viet Nam’s education sector has been ordered to shape up and improve its public image.

The Government asked the Ministry of Education and Training to take measures to solve cases related to teacher redundancy and teacher recruitment in some localities at a meeting between the Government’s working group and the ministry yesterday.

The move follows a series of recent events such as the mass lay-off of 500 Đắk Lắk Province teachers and the sad fact that a teacher with 10 years experience earns less than minimum wage.

The ministry was also requested to address cases which caused society to lose trust in teachers, for example, teachers forcing students to take extra classes, school violence and cases related to teacher’s ethics.

“What has the ministry done to end such cases? We are very sad to hear that an eighth grader in Bến Tre Province was violent against a teacher, a teacher asked students to kneel down as a punishment and then the students’ parents asked the teacher to kneel down and a pregnant teacher (of another school) was asked to kneel down,” said Mai Tiến Dũng, Minister and Chairman of the Office of the Government and the working group’s leader.

The certifying of professors and associate professors must be open and transparent, Dũng said, urging the ministry to accelerate the construction of universities.

Minister of Education and Training Phùng Xuân Nhạ said that the ministry has worked with localities to ensure that recruitment of teaching students is based on real demand.

Job opportunities for teaching graduates depend on each locality’s recruitment policy, Nhạ said.

The ministry will review the records of professor and associate professor candidates by March 31 and will not certify unqualified ones. It is also studying a draft proposal on criteria for certifying professors and associate professors and will submit it to the Prime Minister for approval, he said.

Regarding university entrance exams, this year, financial accounting and engineering majors of some universities require students to take literature, history and geography tests. The Government asked the ministry to review the case and not allow universities to ignore quality to fill in recruitment quotas.

Nguyễn Văn Phúc, Education and Training deputy minister affirmed that training quality must be ensured, threatening to name and shame universities which fail to follow admission regulations.

Following Government efforts to slash the number of business conditions and administrative procedures by half, the ministry plans to remove and simplify 91 out of 212 business conditions to encourage investment into improving education training quality and taking care of students, the minister said. — VNS