Ho Chi Minh City aims for about 30% of students to enter vocational training system

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training has deployed tasks for the new school year for the continuing education and vocational education system (GDTX-GDNN), including setting targets for enrollment and reducing the number of public secondary schools affiliated with universities and colleges...

Extracurricular history lesson of students at Chu Van An Continuing Education Center (An Dong Ward, Ho Chi Minh City)

PHOTO: BICH THANH

Career guidance and streaming are still difficult

In implementing the tasks of the Continuing Education and Vocational Education level for the new school year 2025-2026, the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City requested that heads of educational institutions focus on strategic orientations to 2030, with a vision to 2045. In particular, clearly defining the quality, orientation and brand of each institution.

Accordingly, after merging with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau provinces, Ho Chi Minh City currently has more than 2,400 continuing education facilities, including 46 continuing education centers, vocational education - continuing education centers teaching continuing education programs; 1,791 foreign language and information technology centers, life skills education centers, 320 community learning centers; 2,216 managers and 4,226 teachers.

In addition, there are 481 vocational training institutions, including 103 public units and 378 private units. Specifically, there are 78 colleges, 77 secondary schools, 28 vocational training centers, 74 vocational training centers and 224 registered vocational training institutions.

In addition to teaching the general education program, the centers are gradually diversifying the content of the educational program to attract more people to study and meet the learning needs of society. The centers continue to organize classes according to the general education program at high school level combined with vocational secondary school according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training in vocational education institutions, in order to stream students after junior high school; encourage the centers to shift their focus from teaching general education to organizing short-term training courses, meeting the needs of regular and lifelong learning of local people.

Continue to implement the Project to improve English proficiency for GDTX students. Encourage innovation in teaching methods, modernize facilities and equipment for teaching. Units perform well in coordinating training and diversifying activities, especially focusing on coordinating vocational training for GDTX students, teaching culture to students of secondary schools and colleges. In addition, the centers also organize teaching activities according to learners' needs, teach applied informatics certificates, and review English certificates. At the same time, coordinate with universities to train university degrees online and via distance learning.

Also in the past school year, the Department of Education and Training implemented a program to improve the quality of vocational education in the area with the goal of continuing to train human resources to meet the needs of the labor market and the requirements of economic restructuring of the city.

Focus on promoting high-level human resource training, towards modernization and international integration to meet the needs of socio-economic development. Provide quality post-training human resources for the city and localities in the Southern region, in which some occupations approach the level of countries in the ASEAN region.

However, the department also acknowledged that vocational education still has many difficulties such as low enrollment, many units do not meet the enrollment requirements. The rate of teachers who do not meet teaching standards in all forms; the network of vocational education facilities is concentrated in urban areas while in rural areas the number of vocational education facilities is small, with small training scale. Vocational education facilities do not have many programs linked with junior high schools and high schools in the area, which has made career guidance and streaming more or less difficult.

Intermediate and college level culinary engineering students

PHOTO: YEN THI

Removing obstacles in joint training between vocational schools and the continuing education system

In the new school year, Dr. Nguyen Van Hieu, Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City, noted that one of the issues of particular concern is the removal of obstacles in joint training between vocational schools and the continuing education system. How to give vocational school students the opportunity to study additional cultural subjects, create conditions to participate in the high school graduation exam, and meet the legitimate needs of learners.

The Department of Education and Training has set a target of attracting about 30% of junior high and high school graduates to the vocational training system. In particular, the proportion of female students is encouraged to reach about 35% of the total new enrollment target. Coordinate to organize additional training and regular training for about 60% of the workforce of enterprises in the area and propose to build about 2 high-quality schools.

At the same time, in implementing the new school year tasks of the Vocational Education and Training system, the Department of Education and Training set a goal of reducing about 30% of public secondary schools under universities and colleges in the period 2025-2030.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/tphcm-dat-muc-tieu-khoang-30-hoc-sinh-vao-he-thong-dao-tao-nghe-185250821160740219.htm