"Education has played a vital role in Vietnam's development success stories in the past 20 years. Currently, Vietnam now needs to focus on making its workforce more productive to meet new demands in the transition towards a modern, industrial market economy.” This is reviewed in the Vietnam Development Report 2014, entitled "Raising Vietnam's Skills: Preparing the workforce for a modern market economy" recently announced by the World Bank in Hanoi.
According to the report, the characteristics of the modern market economy will change and become more complex. Today, Vietnamese employers are looking for a set of cognitive skills and behaviours and high quality techniques.
“Literacy among Vietnam’s adult workforce is widespread, more so than in other countries, including wealthier ones, but a more skilled workforce will be the key to Vietnam's successful economic transition,” said World Bank Country Director for Vietnam, Ms Victoria Kwakwa.
Although having a majority of employees who are capable of reading and writing is the biggest advantage of Vietnam, the biggest challenge facing Vietnam is to advance these from pure academic skills to a more critical thinking environment in practice, in which they could know how to solve problems and be equipped to acquire the technical skills from universities, vocational schools and throughout their working lives.
The analysis of the report shows that the modernisation process of the economy will lead to a change in worker demand, a shift from manual and simple work towards more skilled work, as well as from jobs with routine tasks towards non-routine tasks. And new jobs always require new skills.
These new jobs can already be found in today’s labour market, but Vietnam’s employers struggle to find the right workers for them. Equipping its workforce with the right skills will, therefore, be an important part of Vietnam’s effort to accelerate economic growth and further its economic modernization in the coming decade and more,” said Christian Bodewig, the report’s lead author.
Based on a survey for employers in the big cities, the results showed that according to the employers, the technical skills directly relevant to the job are considered the most important skills. At the same time, they also search for cognitive skills such as problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and behavioural skills like teamwork skills and communication skills. Reorienting the education system to focus more on these skills will help the employees in Vietnam be ready for the future because these skills are important for most industries.
Besides, according to the Vietnam Development Report 2014, the Vietnam's traditional education have performed extremely well in providing the learners with literacy and basic computing skills, but it is facing with greater challenges related to training programmes of advanced skills to meet the increasing demands for labour force in the near future.
Therefore, the report proposes a three-step plan to implement the overall strategy for Vietnam skills, in which the first one focuses on improving the school readiness through early childhood development education; the second step aims to lay a foundation for the awareness and behaviour in compulsory education; the third step targets to develop the technical skills to match jobs through a system which better connects between the employers with learners, universities and vocational schools.
The report asks the government to take immediate action because the changes in the education and training field may need a long-term preparation for a generation to build a workforce with the right skills.
“Rather than planning and managing the education and training system centrally and top-down”, said Christian Bodewig, “the role of government is to help to ensure a better information flow between employers, schools and universities and students, and to enhance capacity and set the right incentives by freeing up universities to partner more effectively with businesses.”
Finally, to prepare a qualified workforce for the industrial economy is not only the government's own job, but also the behavioural requirements for the behavioural changes of all stakeholders including employers, universities and training institutions, students and parents to get involved in skill development activities.
Quynh Anh
Vietnamese
