Vietnam targets higher pre-school education quality

(VNF) - Vietnam should learn from advanced early childhood education models in other countries to push forward its own pre-school education system, the opinion was shared in a conference themed “Initiatives to improve quality of early childhood education in Vietnam,” held in Hanoi on October 11^th.

An overview of the workshop. (Source: cpv.org.vn)

The conference was held by the Vietnam Institute of Education Sciences (VIES), New Zealand’s Waikato University, and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Key issues discussed in the conference included policies to support early childhood education and the renovation of child care activities and methods, as well as quality assessment.

According to Assoc. Prof., Dr. Nguyen Ba Minh, head of the Pre-school Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training, universal pre-school education for five-year-old children has been prescribed in the 2009 Education Law, marking a major transformation in Vietnam’s early childhood education in over the past 70 years.

The Prime Minister also approved a project on universal pre-school education for five-year-old children during 2010-2015, Minh said, adding that the implementation of the project in over the past six years has generated vast impacts on the development of the sector.

As of April this year, Vietnam has fulfilled the goal of giving all five-year-old children access to pre-school education.

However, remarkable gap in pre-school education between regions in Vietnam still exists. For example, disadvantaged localities like mountainous areas or industrial park have been struggling with shortage of infrastructures, facilities and teachers, Minh pointed out.

In the conference, delegates also exchanged ideas on proper pre-school curricula for Vietnamese children.

Early childhood education (ECE) plays an important role and lays the first bricks for physical, intellectual, emotional and aesthetic development of children.

Fully aware of the importance of ECE, the Party and the State of Vietnam have been paying vast attention to this field, through the issuance of various ECE-related policies.

Recently, World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and other NGOs have been lending great supports for Vietnam in improving the quality of ECE, particularly the project “Enhancing school readiness for pre-school children” (period 2013-2017)./.

( VNF )