HCM City (VNA) – HoChi Minh City’s education sector plans to enhance the applicationof IT in management, teaching, testing, and student assessment, said LeThanh Liem, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee.

Speaking at a recent conferenceon smart education, Liem said the city’s Department of Education andTraining had set up IT application architecture and a shared database for theentire educational sector.

Liem said the city wantedto develop a smart city with human resources who can take advantageof scientific and technological advances.

A smart city will requirepeople with the necessary skills and knowledge to adapt to a newworking environment in the 4.0 industry era, he said, adding that teachingmethodologies must also be reformed.

Liem said that schools anduniversities in the city were carrying out many pilot smart educationmodels which have had positive achievements.

In the 2019-20 academic year,the city is piloting a project called a Smart School at five high schools -Nguyen Du; Le Quy Don; Thuong Hien; and Tran Dai Nghia and Le Hong PhongSchools for the Gifted.

Truong Thi Le Ha, Vice Rectorof Le Hong Phong School for the Gifted in District 5, said the school hasclassrooms equipped with advanced technologies which aid teaching andlearning. Artificial intelligence also has been taught widely in theschool, Ha said.

Although Le Quy Don SecondarySchool in District 3 was not chosen to pilot a Smart School project, ithas invested in building advanced STEAM (Science, Technology,Engineering, Art, Maths) practice classrooms with 3D printers and scanners andother modern devices.

The classroom helped the schoolwin 2019 I-Star Awards from the HCM City Department of Science andTechnology. Students use the room to make robots or other items.

Many school managers said theywere seriously considering STEM application, an approach to learningand development that integrates science, technology, engineering andmathematics. However, the STEM approach has not yet been used widely inthe city because of the high cost of implementation, they said.

Director of the Department ofEducation and Training Le Hong Son said the city had seen a highgrowth of students year-by-year, which has affected educational qualityand created barriers to implementing advanced teaching models.  

Funds for developinginfrastructure for schools to develop smart education are limited,according to Son.

According to the department,the city has 2,283 kindergartens, primary, secondary and high schools, andcontinuing education centres.

There are 54 universities,52 colleges, 64 vocational training centres and 82 professional educationcentres in the city.

The total numberof students is more than 2 million. There are 100,000 teachers,lecturers and scientists in the city's education sector./.