Vietnam to Spend VND70T on Textbook, Education Reform by 2017

The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) has announced that the country will spend VND70 trillion ($3.39 billion) on a project to reform textbooks and improve education quality for general schools from now to 2017. Vu Dinh Chuan, Director of the Secondary Education Department under the MOET said at a recent conference that the reform is suitable at the time when the country is in the process of global integration.  Of the sum, over VND960 billion will be used for textbook reform, VND35 trillion for school infrastructure, VND30 trillion for equipment purchase and VND390 billion for teacher training. Experts have, however, raised their concerns over the quality of textbooks when the reform is finished in 2017. (Ha Noi Moi – New Hanoi June 9 p1)