Dear brothers and sisters,

If you are Minister of Education and Training, what are 3 things you would do to improve Vietnam’s education system?

For me, I would do 3 things: Firstly, university autonomy. Secondly, moral education. And thirdly, university education for all people.

Let me talk details more.

The first thing is university autonomy.

We usually say that to improve Vietnam’s education system we need: increasing salary for teachers, improving teaching some subjects such as English, history, foreign languages, physical exercises, or adding this subject or deleting that subject… All these things, we can achieve with one solution. It’s university autonomy.

University autonomy means a school can make all decisions itself.

There are 4 areas of autonomy: organisational autonomy, financial autonomy, staffing autonomy and academic autonomy.

• Organisational autonomy means a school can make decisions itself  about who are its leaders, who are owners, what the school structure is…
• Financial autonomy means the school can make decisions itself about its money matters. 
• Staffing autonomy means a school can make decisions itself about employees and teachers, such as who can teach, who can not teach…
• And academic autonomy means a school can make decisions itself about what to teach, what not to teach…

When university is autonomous, university can make decisions itself about salary for teachers, improving teaching, adding this subject or delete that subject…

The second thing is moral education. Moral education trains students in the way of living: do good things, avoid bad things, loving your neighbors, caring for your people… Primary and high schools should have to teach moral education. And universities can teach it if they want.

The third thing is university education for all people. All people are the rich and the poor, men and women, boys and girls, smart and not too smart persons… All people can go to university.

How to achieve university for all? The government must make it easy for people to open universities. And the government should create a student loan program for all students.

If I’m Minister of Education and Training, I would do those 3 things. 

Wishing our education system become healthier and healthier. 

Phạm Thu Hương