National Project Funds Skills Training for Ethnic Teachers

About 5,000 ethnic teachers have received financial support and soft-skill training as part of a five-year national programme towards quality improvement for high school teachers and specialised vocational school teachers. At a meeting yesterday to conclude the programme, which started in 2007, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga said it had made great progresses in raising the capability of teachers and those working in education management. Vu Quoc Chung, director of the programme, said the most important result was the creation of standardised positions for principals and teachers. The project has provided more than 5,044 scholarships for ethnic university students studying to become teachers. Sixty percent are female. Training has also been given to 33,000 education management experts and officers. Vo Van Thang, head of the An Giang Teaching Faculty at An Giang University in the Mekong Delta, said it had been difficult to develop a source of ethnic teachers, so it was important to train ethnic students. Eiko Izawa, an education specialist from the Asian Development Bank, said that training teachers was the first step to improve education. (Vietnam News Oct 18)