Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ho Chi Minh City attends the International Cooperation for Vietnam’s Universities of Education Conference

Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ho Chi Minh City attends the International Cooperation for Vietnam’s Universities of Education Conference

The Vietnamese government recently proposed revising the nation’s teacher training policy and urged the universities to improve the quality of teaching, and promote exchange and cooperation programs internationally, so that they meet international standards. With this in mind, the Ho Chi Minh City University of Education hosted the International Cooperation for Vietnam’s Universities of Education Conference on October 19, 2017. Personnel from universities of education in Vietnam, and from a number of foreign organizations, as well as some local officials, participated.
Ms. Ou Chi-Hsi, Education Attaché at the Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ho Chi Minh City was invited to speak about Taiwan’s teacher training policies, New Southbound Policy, and suggestions for cooperation in the future.
Ms. Ou pointed out that education is the key to a country’s future, and that quality education relies on quality teachers; for this reason, Taiwan has always focused on formulating and implementing policies to improve the quality of teachers. Among the many aspects are providing encouragement to teachers to continue to strive for excellence and providing opportunities for teachers to do in-service training, and cultivate a second area of specialization. This is in keeping with Taiwan’s promoting engagement in lifelong learning.
An important component of Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy is to learn the languages and about the cultures of countries in our region, including Vietnam, and assist those countries to learn Mandarin Chinese and about Taiwan. Currently, however, there are not enough qualified Vietnamese language teachers in Taiwan. Ms. Ou urged the universities of education in Vietnam to work together with universities in Taiwan, to train high quality language teachers to teach Vietnamese in Taiwan, and high quality language teachers to teach Mandarin Chinese in Vietnam. They could, for example, set up a twinning system that includes an internship for students to teach Vietnamese in Taiwan’s primary and secondary schools, to help alleviate the current language teacher shortage, and bring in quality Vietnamese teachers to Taiwan.
All in all, the conference was a great success. Since the conference, representatives from many of the universities of education in Vietnam have come to the Education Division to talk about wanting to work with Taiwan and discuss possibilities for setting up a twinning system with one or more universities in Taiwan.

Photo:International Cooperation for Vietnam’s Universities of Education Conference participants.