Vietnam Education Essay Example

social development. Investment for education is considered investment for development. (2) Education is the foundation for social development, and rapid and sustainable economic growth. 3) Educational innovation should be in keeping with the demands for socio-economic development; at the same time, creating a learning society that provides life long education for all and promotes all for education is an urgent task.

(4) To continue educational innovation systematically and comprehensively in order to enhance the quality and effect of education; and to serve the country’s sustainable development. ” (Vietnam and Education Report, 2-4) As Viet Nam’s Education System is closely related to social, economic and political changes and developments, it has to reorient to be able to cope with new challenges of the country.

Overall objectives of educational innovation for sustainable development in Vietnam are improve the quality and effectiveness in education, meet the diversified demands for and levels of human resource in order to serve regional and international integration; increase the scale and structure of the education system, and guarantee the implementation of policies on social equity in education. The implementation of social policies to ensure social equality (especially to remote and disadvantaged areas and groups of people…) is an essential task of education.

It is not merely a priority but a strategy to provide human resource for sustainable development.

That is the good way for building a strong society, like Margeret L. Andersen say in the book Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society: “with functionalist theory, … education accomplishes certain consequences, or functions, for a society… According to functionalist explanation, the importance to society of this kind of socialization explains why an education institution began

and crew in society. Occupational training is another function of education and is necessary for a system that train people for jobs. (425-4126) According to National Institute for Educational Development, though the “renovation” time, nearly 94% of the populations of 15 years of age and over are literate.

All of the provinces and cities have achieved the national standard for illiteracy eradication and primary education universalisation. Some advantaged cities and provinces have been progressing to the universalisation lower secondary education. The average number of years attending school for population is 7. 3.

Primary school enrolment is almost universal, net enrolment in primary education has increased from 87% in 1998 to 92% in 2000.

Similarly, net enrolment in lower secondary education has increased from 30% in 1993 to 74% in 2000. Gender differences in primary school are cooperatively small and the quality of basic education has been gradually improving through the introduction of reformed curriculum. During the last ten years higher education has been increased 100%. There are 118 students per 10,000 population in 2000, and increase to 670 in 2007.

Vocational training centers have expanded in major cities and town, and access to vocational and professional training has increased rapidly. The bad sides: However, major challenges in education still exist.

Children's participation and achievement rate are significantly lower in the mountainous areas and Mekong Delta, than they are in other parts of the country. Performance rates of children, especially at the lower and upper secondary level are low. The rate of girls attending primary and secondary education in poor and ethnic minority areas remains low.

Because of the sexist still happen in mind of all

Vietnamese men, who keep most the family power, although access to higher education and vocational training has expanded, and the number of female students has increased significantly in both universities and secondary technical schools.

Professional and technical qualifications of the Labor force remain low, especially in the rural areas. The number of women with technical qualification is still low. Fewer women than men have training of any kind, for example, in 2006; just over 12 percent of the total rural women aged 13 and over have technical qualification. The percent of women over the aged of 13 with technical qualifications was approximately 9%, while for men it was 27% in the whole country.

Using the conflict theory, which emphasizes the disintegrative aspects of education, we can define the result of the roblem. “Conflict theory focuses on the competition between group of power, income, and social status, giving special attention to the prevailing importance of institution in the conflict. One intersection of education with group and class competition is show in the significant correlation between education and class, race, and gender. The inequality distribution of education separates groups. The higher the educational attainment of person, the more likely that person will be middle- to upper-class, White, male.

Education level is a mechanism for producing and reproducing inequality in our society” (Ansersen, 426) Therefore, the discrimination against minorities, working people, or women would be wider.

In addition, there are some problematic areas that need to be addressed. Using the symbolic interactionist view of education, we can know about the reason behind those problems. “Symbolic theory focuses on what arise forms the operation of the interaction process during

the schooling experience. Through interaction between student and teacher, certain expectations arise on the part of both.

As a result, the teacher begins to expect or anticipate certain behavior, good or bad, from student and opposite. ” (Andersen, 427)  The first problem is teaching and learning practice.

Teaching methods in Vietnam are found to be ineffective since they emphasize lecturing and rote learning. Therefore, with what expect from school, the teacher force student follow his program. The second is curricula consisting of too many subjects with out-of-date contents. Instructors’ professional lives are also considered problematic. The problem here is the result from ancestor, teacher nowadays just follow what they have taught.

Instructors have to work for too many hours but receive salaries that are too low, which prevents them from investing adequate time in planning lessons, meeting students and researching.

Again, the money problem is the main reason. The fourth problem is research. Vietnamese universities have the habit of recruiting instructors out of their own graduates, and this practice discourages an active research environment to develop. As a result, instructors don’t have many incentives to work better and improve teaching and learning practice since they don’t receive proper encouragement from schools.

And the fifth area that needs to be improved is the way students’ performance and schools’ effectiveness are assessed.

The quality of Vietnamese universities isn’t evaluated based on students’ performance. In addition, there is an inequality between rich and poor people. The most important reason for educational inequality between rich and poor is socioeconomic. Rich students tend to have parents with higher levels of education, occupational status, and income than do poor students.

These

parental characteristics are associated with rich students’ better educational outcomes.

Differences in family background consistently account for about one third of the test score gap and for almost all of the inequality in rates of college entry and graduation among rich and poor high school graduates. Besides, having money, rich people have more change to choose the education level such as study in private school or study abroad and left the poor with little or even no change for study. World Bank analyses data from basic literacy and numeracy tests taken by a sample of 1,000 eight-year-old children from five Vietnamese provinces.

Researchers found that 88 per cent could read a basic sentence, 75 per cent could write a basic sentence without errors or difficulties and 86 per cent could successfully answer a simple numeracy test. There was significant variation by location. Rural children performed worse than urban children in all three tests – 95 per cent, 85 per cent and 92 per cent of urban children could successfully answer the reading, writing, and numeracy tests compared with 86 per cent, 72 per cent and 84 per cent of rural children.

These variations were even more marked between socio-economic groups. They confirmed evidence that under half of the ‘poorest’ children were not able to write at the level expected for their age. Enrolment rates may be high, but it is clear the quality of primary education, particularly in poor areas, is unsatisfactory.

Without remedial action, a large group of children appear likely to leave primary school without adequate numeracy or literacy skills. Conclusion:

Although heavily influenced by ideological thoughts, traditional values, the inequality concept has

not changed drastically during the last 20 years, under pressure of new evidence and influence by market theories. In reality, due to low governance capacity and technical difficulties, there was a tendency towards individualism with low social responsibility. This “natural” tendency was in contradiction with socialist ideals, created a dynamism of Vietnam development. We should have a believe about a good future.

Word Cited Andersen, Margaret L. ; Taylor, Howard F.