VnnNews – A question has been raised that why the money spent on education keeps increasing, but education quality does not.
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A Finance Ministry publication projects education and training expenditures in 2009 at some 100,000 billion dong, 20 percent of the State Budget.
At the website of the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), we learn that the State spent 15,600 billion dong on education and training in 2001. That expense soared to 41,630 billion dong in 2005 and to 66,770 billion dong in 2007.
In other words, the Government spends a lot of money on education and training.
The money for education development comes not only from the state budget, but also from foreign aid and foreign loans. The Ministry of Planning and Investment reported that in 1993-1998, education, healthcare, environment and science and technology were the sectors that attracted the highest volume of official assistance development (ODA) capital. And of those sectors, education alone accounted for 50 percent of the $5.3 billion received in aid.
Meanwhile, individual citizens also make great contribution to the education and training development. “Vietnamese Education – Investment and Financial Structure,” a MoET report, said that individuals account for 25 percent of total spending on education and training. Vietnamese and foreign experts believe that the actual figure is much higher than reported by the ministry.
Number of students remains the same
MoET’s official website reports that in 2001,
However, the number of students at universities, junior colleges and vocational schools has been increasing considerably. GSO counted 900,000 in universities and two year colleges in 2000 and 1.6 million in 2007. The number of students in vocational schools rose from 255,000 to 614,000.
Thus the total number of students in the educational system hasn’t changed much.
Who manages money for education?
In a May 2009 workshop on renovating financial management, Deputy Prime Minister/Education Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan said that 74 percent of the State Budget for education has been managed by province-level education and training departments, and only 21 percent by other central ministries and branches. MoET itself only controls five percent of the eduation budget and there is no regulation requiring reporting on the budget use to MoET.
The Education Minister complained also that MoET does not have necessary tools to appraise the efficiency of investment in education. Nor can the people, he said, correlate education quality with spending by the State and people.
As we entered the 2009-2010 school year, MoET kept talking about ‘persistent problems’ but didn’t announce any solutions. While the ministry was fumbling with a ‘financial renovation project,’ costs kept going up; tuitions and other charges borne by the families of students haven’t shown signs of levelling off.
Though more and more money has been spent on education while the total number of students has been static, it seems that education quality still has not improved.
Education quality not improved
Research on
Several years ago, the IT firm Intel tested 2,000 information technology students to recruit staff for its Vietnamese manufacturing operations and found that only 90 candidates (five percent) could meet its requirements. Of these 90 candidates, only 40 could meet Intel’s English language standard. Intel said that this was the worst result it has ever seen in the countries where it has invested.
Professor Pham Minh Hac, a former Education Minister, says the World Economic Forum’s ‘map’ of Vietnam’s development shows that the biggest problem now is in education.
As such, a big question remains unanswered: why doesn’t education quality be improved even when Vietnam spends more and more money on education?
VietNamNet/Doanh nhan
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