Ministry cuts teaching major enrollment quota

The enrollment quota for teaching majors for the 2018-19 academic year in the country will be cut by 33 per cent compared to the figure last year. - VNA/VNS Photo

All universities, colleges and other education establishments will enroll no more than a total of 35,000 students in the academic year, compared to the total of 54,000 targeted last year. Nearly 43,000 people enrolled last year.

The reduction follows a review on January 5 of teaching needs in each locality and schools’ training capacity, according to the ministry.

Trần Anh Tuấn, deputy head of the ministry’s Tertiary Education Department, told Tuổi trẻ (Youth) newspaper that schools with training majors meeting social demands will not have their enrollment reduced.

Hà Nội University of Education, the schools of education at Huế University and Thái Nguyên University, and HCM City University of Education will have lower enrollment quotas.

Hà Nội University of Education No 2 and Đà Nẵng University of Education will be allowed to keep their enrollment quota of last year, equal to 1,220 and 434 new students, respectively.

Beginning in the 2017-18 academic year, Bạc Liêu University and Tiền Giang University stopped enrolling new students in their departments of education.

Schools that plan to open new departments to train teachers for the new high school education programme should begin to do so this year, the ministry said.

The ministry’s Tertiary Education Department said the reduction would create conditions for them to open more training courses to retrain high school teachers for the new high school education programme.

In recent years, the ministry has been reducing the enrollment quota for teaching majors, with the aim of having only 10 per cent of the country’s total newly enrolled students to be teaching majors by 2020.

From 2013 to 2016, the quota for training teachers was higher than the ministry’s targets. Nearly 100 schools were allowed to train teachers at various levels.

The country has more than 12,000 unnecessary teachers at secondary schools and 4,200 at high schools, according to the ministry.

However, kindergartens are facing a shortage of more than 34,000 teachers, and primary schools, 5,300.

Reducing the scale of training is expected to improve education quality and increase job opportunities for teaching graduates, according to the ministry.

The ministry has also taken steps to improve quality assessment at schools that train teachers. It plans to publicise the assessment results in an effort to motivate schools to improve education quality.