Elevating Vocational Education to Align with Market Demands

2:36:11 PM | 26/1/2024

In response to the evolving needs of students, the labor market, and the provincial mandate for the cultivation of qualified human resources, the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs of Binh Thuan province has been proactive in devising and executing many solutions to foster human resource development. These initiatives include enhancing the efficacy of vocational education institutions to ensure congruence with labor market demands and bolstering the support for enterprises in their endeavors to recruit and upskill their workforce.


Students from the Binh Thuan Economic and Technical School gain hands-on experience at local businesses

According to a report by the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, Binh Thuan province currently has 24 vocational education institutions (13 public institutions and 11 non-public institutions). Vocational training facilities and equipment of vocational schools have been invested to better meet vocational training needs and employment for workers. The quality and effect of vocational training has been enhanced and the self-consciousness of vocational training and job-seeking of rural workers has increased. In 2023, vocational schools actively enrolled and provided vocational training for 13,713 trainees, equal to 137.13% of their full-year plan, including 583 trainees at the college level, 933 at the intermediate level, 933 at the elementary level and 12,197 with short-term training. A diversity of training majors and occupations is closely based on local advantageous fields (industry, tourism and agriculture) and labor market needs such as Industrial electricity, Automotive technology, Mechanical engineering, English, Corporate accounting, Business administration - services, Business administration - Hotel restaurant and tourism, Food processing, Resort management, Social affairs, Nutrition and cooking, and Bartending.

In addition, vocational schools actively enhance joint training to diversify training majors, occupations and forms to develop and improve the quality of human resources. Notably, a college, two intermediate schools and some non-public vocational schools established vocational education cooperation with local and external businesses regarding manpower supply, internship and apprenticeship. Companies also provided scholarships and training equipment for schools. The training cooperation with businesses has been expanded. Training fields, occupations, forms and levels are diverse, so they meet most of the training and recruitment requirements of local companies.

At the same time, to increase the rate of employed workers, the Binh Thuan Employment Service Center and vocational schools have reinforced job counseling in accordance with social needs and future development trends, job opportunities after graduation, and trainee remunerations and support of vocational schools; organized regular job sessions for various workers. In 2023, the Binh Thuan Employment Service Center provided job counseling for 14,708 individuals, introduced employment opportunities to 4,143 job seekers, organized 20 job exchange sessions for 104 businesses and 2,571 job seekers to interact, resulting in the successful employment of 1,087 candidates within many businesses.

Promoting its achievements in carrying out the province’s human resource development policy, the Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs sector will continue to effectively deploy mechanisms and policies on vocational education development, and human resource training and development to serve locally advantageous areas. In particular, the sector will focus on training human resources to meet development requirements of industry, energy, tourism and agriculture to strongly develop the province's three economic pillars. It will pay high attention to training and fostering human resources in terms of educational knowledge, technical expertise, skills, physical health, moral qualities, lifestyle and social psychology and make workable job forecasts, orientations and consultancy.

The sector will continue to invest in building and upgrading physical and technical facilities for vocational schools; encourage companies to join vocational education, improve the quality of local human resources and invest in research and development; and expand cooperation in training high-quality, highly skilled human resources in strong fields and serving local socioeconomic development requirements.

Besides, the sector will effectively carry out vocational training support policies in accordance with three national target programs for 2021-2025 and 2025-2030. In particular, it will focus on supporting vocational training for poor workers, ethnic minorities, disabled people, rural workers, unemployed workers and underemployed workers. It will enhance the effect of training human resource development for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the province by expanding contractual vocational training between vocational schools and enterprises; closely aligning training with recruitment needs of businesses and the labor market; boosting cooperation with businesses, requesting business associations to support in mobilizing SMEs to place orders, develop training programs, support internships and provide feedback on the quality of human resource training; and increase the rate of workers with well-paid jobs after vocational training.

Furthermore, the sector will strengthen the leadership and operation of all-level governments, socio-political organizations and unions to combine many measures and forms to mobilize all available resources for vocational training; diversify training forms and methods and associate them with new rural construction; boost communications and vocational counseling, especially for rural workers; and spread legal policies on vocational training to raise awareness about its importance and benefits.

Source: Vietnam Business Forum

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