Directive No. 14/GD-ĐT on tasks for the 1996-1997 academic year for preschool education, general education, vocational education, and continuing education.

DIRECTIVE

On the tasks for the 1996-1997 academic year of various educational fields and levels: preschool education, general education, vocational education, and continuing education.

The 1995-1996 academic year, the third year implementing the Central Resolution No. 4 (Session VII) on "continuing to renew the education and training cause," was successfully completed.

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Along with political and social stability and economic growth, the education and training cause has made new progress. The pace of universalizing education and eliminating illiteracy has increased much faster than in previous years. The scale of education at all levels and fields has expanded significantly, especially the number of junior high school students has increased rapidly in all localities. The quality of education has shown encouraging improvements; dropout and retention rates have decreased; the effectiveness of training at all levels has increased. Material facilities for teaching and learning have been improved; many mountainous districts and provinces now have boarding schools for children of ethnic minorities. Party and government leaders at all levels have become more concerned; mass organizations and the people have become more actively involved in developing education, contributing to mobilizing social resources for education.

However, there still exist many weaknesses and pressing issues related to the quality of moral education in schools; negative phenomena in supplementary classes, examinations, and issuance of certificates; disparities in learning conditions among different social strata, etc.

The 1996-1997 academic year, the first year implementing the Party's Eighth Congress Resolution, will continue to renew according to the direction determined through the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Congresses and the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee. It will be the first year to implement the Central Resolution No. 2 (Session VII) on education and training, which will soon be carried out. "The general direction of the education and training sector over the next five years is to develop human resources to meet the requirements of industrialization and modernization, create conditions for the people, especially young people, to have jobs; overcome negative and weak aspects in education and training" (Political Report of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party at the Eighth National Congress). This direction has been detailed in Program 7 - The Program for Developing Education and Training in the Report on the Direction and Tasks of the Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development from 1996 to 2000.

Under the light of the Eighth Party Congress Resolution, starting from the achievements and shortcomings of the education and training cause after ten years of renewal, especially in the 1995-1996 academic year, the general and specific tasks of education for the 1996-1997 academic year are:

I. GENERAL TASKS:

The 1996-1997 academic year is very important; the task of our sector is to mobilize the entire industry's forces, enhance the responsibility of Party committees at all levels, governments, mass organizations, enterprises, awaken the people's spirit of learning and progressive will, overcome difficulties and challenges, strive to achieve and exceed the set goals for each level in the academic year: expanding the scale, improving quality, and enhancing efficiency while addressing negative and weak aspects in education and training, improving the conditions for children of policy families and poor families to attend school, enhancing the management capacity of the education system, creating a foundation for successfully completing the goals of the education and training development program in the following years.

Implementing the above general task requires understanding the guiding thoughts below:

1. Implementing three educational goals simultaneously: raising public awareness, training human resources, and nurturing talent. Building appropriate and effective methods for each goal. Creating significant changes in training, nurturing, and improving the quality of human resources to meet the requirements of the industrialization and modernization cause.

2. Combining the development of the education cause with the resolution of negative issues to create clear changes in order and discipline in educational activities. Consolidating, implementing, and proposing effective solutions to better address social equity issues in education.

3. Mobilizing resources and using them economically, reasonably, and effectively to develop the education cause. Promoting socialization in education, encouraging economic and social forces to contribute to education, participating in building a healthy educational environment, launching a movement where everyone learns and participates in building the education cause.

4. Continuing to promote diversification and democratization of education, while preventing negative impacts caused by the market mechanism's downside. Moving towards establishing a unified knowledge standard and evaluation criteria for all types of education. Having policies to assist, guide, and manage well semi-public, private, and民办教育机构的发展和管理。继续推动“规范、关爱、责任”的运动。

5. 建立教育规划方法，结合预测进行规模扩展，并确保合理的结构：各级教育之间的结构要符合提高全民文化水平的要求；各学科之间的结构要满足经济发展目标和培训合同的需求；各地区之间的结构要在发挥优势、限制各地区的薄弱环节的同时，避免教育发展速度的差距过大。积极建设高质量的各级学校体系。

6. 强烈改革教育管理和培训工作。教育部负责全国教育和培训工作的国家管理。省和直辖市人民政府对其辖区内的教育和培训事业负直接责任。

加强专业监察和管理监察工作。根据政府关于简化行政程序的第38号决定（1994年5月4日），建立从部到学校的行业管理常规。

改革考试制度和文凭发放制度，以确保公平、客观和准确性，克服繁琐和消极现象。

Chấn chỉnh chế độ thi và cấp phát văn bằng nhằm đảm bảo công bằng, khách quan, chính xác, khắc phục các phiền toái và tiêu cực.

7. On the basis of summarizing ten years of educational reform, distill lessons learned to continue to innovate and improve the curriculum, content, and teaching methods; urgently train a sufficient number of teachers who meet quality standards; accelerate the construction of schools and classes to eliminate the third shift learning situation and standardize schools; strengthen infrastructure, provide textbooks, and ensure timely and adequate supply of books for highland, deep inland, and remote areas.

Pay attention to improving the teaching environment in schools, vigorously promote tree planting to ensure clean and beautiful campuses, care for students' drinking water, consolidate and open more boarding and half-day boarding schools near general secondary schools to create conditions for children of ethnic minorities, policy beneficiaries, students from deep inland, remote, and isolated areas to attend school.

8. Develop a strategy for education development and the Education Law to institutionalize the guiding thought: "Education is the top national policy," along with the Party and State's viewpoints and policies on educational reform.

9. Emphasize and promote information dissemination and propaganda through mass media to promptly introduce new reforms and achievements in education and training, helping all levels, sectors, and the people to correctly assess the current situation and understand policies, and participate in building the education and training cause.

II. SPECIFIC TASKS.

1. Early Childhood Education

- Consolidate existing kindergartens and preschools, develop early childhood education facilities based on ensuring infrastructure and teacher staffing. Gradually increase the proportion of children aged 3-5 attending school, especially prioritizing those aged 5. Strive for over 30 provinces to achieve over 80% of 5-year-olds attending school, and the remaining provinces over 60%.

- Vigorously socialize early childhood education, encourage the development of various types of private and public preschools and family childcare groups according to regulations of the Ministry.

- Expand the construction of high-quality provincial and district-level key kindergartens and preschools.

- Ensure that all schools strictly implement the curriculum issued by the Ministry. Effectively carry out special topics directed by the Ministry.

- Local authorities should invest in building infrastructure for early childhood education. Mobilize social resources and parents to build schools, care for teachers' and students' lives.

- The Ministry will continue to propose policies to support the living conditions of kindergarten teachers, particularly those in mountainous, deep inland, and rural areas, to the Government. Pending the Government's decision, Departments of Education and Training should advise local authorities to support kindergarten teachers.

- Encourage educators to participate in contests and activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of early childhood education, thereby promoting awareness among the people about caring for and educating young children.

2. General Secondary Education.

2.1. Primary School Level.

- Establish primary schools based on implementing the Law on Universal Primary Education and Decree No. 338/HĐBT dated October 26, 1991, now the Government.

- Organize and effectively implement the National Day for Sending Children to School on September 5, 1996, to mobilize the highest possible number of six-year-old children to enter first grade; re-enroll children who have dropped out; and ensure that children with disabilities can study in integrated or specialized classes. Ensure that children without access to regular schools can learn through appropriate forms such as loving classes and home schooling.

- Continue to direct the completion of universal primary education. Review and resubmit targets for each locality, focusing on difficult areas: mountains, highlands, and deep inland regions. Strive for an additional ten provinces to reach the national standard in the 1996-1997 academic year.

- Focus on the overall quality of primary education, reduce dropout and retention rates, enhance training effectiveness, and consolidate achievements in completed universal primary education areas, increasing the proportion of age-appropriate enrollment.

Directly teach all subjects, emphasize moral education and physical training, and improve classroom teaching efficiency.

Plan to gradually shift to two daily sessions. This year, at least one county must have a school transitioning to two daily sessions in the 1997-1998 academic year, and prepare infrastructure and teacher training.

Encourage the establishment of private boarding schools, actively build high-quality key primary schools, and construct primary schools according to standards.

Develop specific plans to address the shortage of primary school teachers. Departments of Education and Training should plan financial investment to prioritize the training and development of primary school teachers.

- Encourage schools with the necessary conditions to implement "educational technology," continue to consolidate and improve quality. Conduct surveys of the effectiveness of educational technology in different regions to clearly evaluate and make decisive decisions.

- Begin to manage the implementation of universal primary education towards digitalization.

- Do not establish specialized schools or classes at the primary level.

- Promote preparations for primary education after the year 2000, such as designing goals and plans, developing programs and compiling materials, and conducting experimental implementations.

2.2. Secondary School Level.

Continue to consolidate and build a network of secondary schools to expand scale and improve educational quality.

Pay attention to directing junior high schools to reduce dropout and retention rates. Encourage and create conditions for junior high school teachers to upgrade their qualifications to university level.

Develop semi-public and private schools in areas with suitable conditions and needs. Advise the State to issue policies supporting non-public schools, especially in difficult areas.

- Continue to pilot specialized secondary schools based on the conclusions of the three-year pilot conference.

- Develop plans to uniformly implement universal secondary education.

- Continue to consolidate and expand networks of specialized schools and high-quality key schools. Accelerate the construction of three high-quality secondary schools in Hue, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

- Strengthening and building the system of central, provincial, and district PTDTNT schools to become key schools with high quality for ethnic groups. There shall be plans for training and utilizing all junior secondary school (JSS) and senior secondary school (SSS) graduates from provincial and district PTDTNT schools. Expanding the system of departments and faculties at universities to continue training SSS graduates from PTDTNT schools and students under policy who have not been admitted to universities, colleges, and technical schools.

- Promoting the construction of vocational training and retraining centers, while assigning tasks to local vocational training centers and vocational schools to implement career guidance and general vocational training for students, especially JSS students.

- Promoting the movement to innovate teaching methods, the movement to strive to become excellent teachers. Enhancing supervision and inspection of teachers' professional work and secondary schools.

- Paying more attention to the overall quality of secondary education, first and foremost political and moral quality, implementing comprehensive and quality teaching of subjects, striving to cover foreign language courses at the secondary level, expanding computer science, national defense education, and physical education courses for students. Continuing to reform classification, examination, evaluation, and graduation exams, using part of the learning results and graduation exam scores for promotion and university admission.

- Building Youth League organizations in schools to enable students to self-discipline. Encouraging the implementation of monitor systems in general schools (following the model of cooperation with the Youth League as implemented in Ho Chi Minh City).

3. Vocational Education.

- Coordinating with central ministries, agencies, and provinces to rearrange the network of vocational schools in the area to invest in key areas.

- The Ministry will submit to the Government a strategy for training human resources nationwide to achieve the target of 23-25% of the workforce being trained by the year 2000.

- Each province needs to develop a plan for training local human resources to meet the requirements of economic restructuring and the demand for high-tech personnel for concentrated industrial zones implementing industrialization and modernization at each locality.

- Departments of Education and Training shall advise the People's Committees of provinces on the arrangement of the network of technical secondary schools. Fully implementing state management of vocational education in the area. Encouraging and creating conditions for domestic and foreign economic organizations and individuals to open vocational training classes.

- Strengthening international relations to develop the vocational education sector.

- Linking vocational education with general education to implement pilot programs for JSS and general vocational training for students.

- Actively seeking funding sources to build key schools, develop training programs, and set standards for some key fields.

4. Lifelong Education (LLE).

Accelerating the speed of eliminating illiteracy, particularly in the Mekong Delta and mountainous regions. Continuing to direct the implementation of conclusions from two specialized conferences on eliminating illiteracy in Tuyen Quang and Tay Ninh. The Ministry will coordinate with the Central Propaganda Team and the National Committee on Eliminating Illiteracy to assign targets for People's Committees of provinces that have not yet met the standard to implement Resolution No. 4 of the Central Committee, which aims to complete the elimination of illiteracy by the year 2000.

In the 1996-1997 academic year, striving to have ten additional provinces reach the national standard for universal primary education and universal secondary education.

Continuing to develop post-elimination literacy classes, supplementary JSS and SSS cultural classes, and expanding various forms of study to positively contribute to universal JSS education. Consolidating and expanding provincial and district LLE centers to meet diverse educational and vocational training needs of the people and workers.

Strictly managing foreign language centers, computer centers, and part-time university classes to ensure the quality of training. Departments of Education and Training need to gradually unify the management of foreign language and computer examinations at centers within their jurisdiction. Implementing supervision and inspection of teaching and learning activities at centers to ensure strict examination procedures, issuance of certificates and diplomas in accordance with current regulations of the Ministry.

The Minister of Education and Training respectfully proposes:

- The Chairmen (Chairwomen) of Provincial People's Committees and Municipal People's Committees directly under the Central Government are responsible for implementing, directing, and inspecting the People's Committees of Districts (Cities) and sectors under their authority to ensure the successful completion of educational and training tasks in the 1996-1997 academic year in each locality.

- The Directors of Departments of Education and Training are responsible for managing, organizing implementation, and inspecting levels of educational management and educational institutions in their jurisdictions, implementing the academic year's tasks under the leadership of the Party Committee, directives of the People's Council, People's Committee, and coordination with relevant agencies, sectors, and mass organizations.

- The Heads of Departments and Heads of units under the Ministry are responsible for guiding, inspecting, and supervising the implementation of this directive according to their assigned functions and responsibilities by the Ministry.

This directive shall be thoroughly implemented throughout the entire education and training sector from the Ministry to schools and educational institutions across the country, widely publicized through mass media, conferences, seminars, and among the general public so that everyone is aware and actively participates in building and developing education.