Hanoi (VNA)𒁏 – Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha clarified various issues of voters’ concern, including measures to enhance education and training quality at the November 16 National Assembly hearing.

Responding to deputy Le Minh Chuan from Quang Ninh province’s question on solutions to develop human resources, the minister said that current training quality remains poor, as training programmes have yet to match the requirements of the labour market, leading to a lack of practical knowledge as well as language and IT skills among graduates. In past years, the ministry asked training facilities to consult recruiters before designing their courses, however, the ministry has failed to supervise the work, he said. Minister Nha promised that the ministry would work harder to ensure training programmes meet market demands. Answering deputy Pham Van Hoa from Dong Thap province on whether Vietnam has too many universities, Minister Nha said that currently, there are 200 students out of 10,000 people in Vietnam , much lower than many other countries. However, many universities fail to meet quality standards, which will be reviewed soon, he said. The minister revealed that the Government aims to open more universities, while tightening control on quality. Regarding support for students from ethnic minority groups, the minister said that the ministry will work with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Government Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs to improve the efficiency of the support, ensuring that ethnic minority students are employed after graduating. In terms of literacy, Minister Nha said that currently, 4.2 percent of Vietnamese people are illiterate. The ratio is 5.3 percent among ethnic minority groups. To deal with the problem, the Government has approved a project to teach Vietnamese to ethnic minority children with a hope to teach them foreign languages in the future, he noted. To further clarify issues raised by deputies, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam said that international organisations have recommended that Vietnam pay special attention to general education for ethnic minority groups. According to the Asian Productivity Organisation, as many as 80 percent of university graduates in Vietnam fail to meet requirements of multinational enterprises and needs further training. However, the ratio is only 20 percent among simple technical labourers. The Deputy PM pointed to a number of reasons for the problem, including poor quality control of university teaching programmes. He said that it is necessary to encourage universities to control their own quality, while setting up quality assessment centres. At the same time, the Government and Ministry of Education and Training have directed the strengthening of university’s independence in finance and personnel organisation, he said, pointing to the need to design policies to improve access to high quality education.-VNA