Revisiting the primary education curriculum of Vietnam
after 5 years of reform
I.
Background
Under the strong and rapid development of socio-economic and science-
technology in general and the education sector in particular, the former curriculum and
textbooks have demonstrated many shortages and inadequacy. In 2000, National
Assembly and Government have promulgated Resolution and Instruction regulating the
mandate for a basic educational reform (Resolution No 40/2000/QH10 of National
Assembly and Instruction No 14/2001/CT-TTg of the Prime Minister). Executing
National Assembly’s resolution and Government’s Instruction, the Ministry of Education
and Training (MOET) has implemented the general educational curriculum renovation.
From 2002-2003, new educational curriculum and textbooks, beginning with the first and
sixth grade have been built across the country. Each year later, new educational
curriculum and textbooks have been realized for the consecutive primary grade and lower
secondary grade. In the school year 2008-2009, the accomplishment of the 12th grade
educational curriculum and textbooks makes it completed for the process of building new
educational curriculum and textbook in basic education.
As a result, the primary education curriculum has been pilot for three rounds at all
grades in this school year (2007-2008). This article will revisit and appraise the strength,
achievements as well as limitations and challenges of the curriculum reform after the
third round of pilot. Before evaluating, this article shall introduce some traits about the
curriculum in term of conception, goals of primary education and some general points
about structure of the curriculum.
II.
The introduction of curriculum in primary education.
1. The conception about the curriculum.
New curriculum in primary education in particular and in basic education in
general has been edited with new conception, new philosophy about program, textbook
relevant to new context of development tendency and international integration. Instead of
thinking that curriculum is only a combination of teaching and learning content, the
curriculum is now considered as comprehensive pedagogical action plan including:
educational goals, scope, level and structure of educational content; method and form of
organizing educational activities; evaluation of educational achievements. Program is
unified nationwide.
2. Basic education is divided into 3 levels: primary, lower secondary and upper
secondary. Primary education includes five years of schooling, from the first to the fifth
grade (the age of pupil of the first class is six). Secondary education includes 4 years for
lower secondary (from the sixth to the ninth grade) and 3 upper secondary years (from
the tenth to the twelfth grade).
The target of primary education is to help students to set the initial foundation for an
appropriated and long-lasting moral behaviors, knowledge, physical and aesthetic
developments and other basic skills for them entering lower secondary education.
3. Restructuring the education content need to meet the targeted education goals.
Requirements of the content of primary education: Primary education has to ensure
that pupils obtain simple and necessary knowledge about nature, society and human
being; achieve basic skills in listening, reading, speaking, writing and calculating; have
habits of physical exercise and hygiene; initial understanding about singing, dancing,
music and arts.
Primary education program in Vietnam is organized into subjects and educational
activities:
- Mathematics;
- Vietnamese;
- Life skills, environment understanding…, including: citizenship education,
nature and society (class 1,2,3); science, history and geography (Class 4,5).
- Fine arts education including: art, music, handicraft (class 1,2,3), technology
(Class 4,5).
- Physical education: gymnastics.
Among them, Vietnamese and mathematic are attached to a special importance in
order to help pupils acquire basic skills in listening, reading, speaking, writing and
calculating.
Education Plan for Primary Education
Subjectiles and
Grade
Grade
Grade
Grade
Grade
educational activities
1
2
3
4
5
Vietnamese
10
9
8
8
8
Maths
4
5
5
5
5
Citizenship education
1
1
1
1
1
Nature and Society
1
1
2
Science
2
2
History and Geography
2
2
Music
1
1
1
1
1
Fine Arts
1
1
1
1
1
Handycraft
1
1
1
1
1
Technique
Gymnastics
1
2
2
2
2
Team activities
2
2
2
2
2
Extra activities
4 periods/month
Selective
*
*
*
*
*
Total period/week
22+
23+
23+
25+
25+
A new point of the curriculum is to define standard of knowledge and skill – it is
basic, minimum required knowledge and skills achieved through subjects as well as
educational activities that pupils must and could obtain.
Knowledge and skill standard is concretized in topics of each subject in a specific
class, in each learning area and for the entire level. Requirements of attitudes are defined
for a specific grade and for the entire level.
Knowledge and skill standard is a foundation for textbooks design, teaching
management, student appraisal in each subject and education activities aiming at ensuring
unification, practicability of primary education curriculum; ensuring the quality and
effectiveness of primary education process.
4. The new curriculum also identifies the direction for educating methodology, form of
organizing education activities and achievement evaluation at primary education level.
Methods and forms of organizing educational activities in primary education.
Methods and forms of organizing educational activities in primary education level
must promote the activeness, self-awareness, and creativeness of pupils; be relevant with
the characteristics of subject, educational activities, pupil’s features and specific
condition of each grade; to provide pupils for the methods of self-study and ability to
work together; enhance the capacity of transforming knowledge into practice; and to have
impact on pupils’ emotional development, to bring them joy and pleasure of learning.
Teachers are able to actively choose, apply teaching methods and forms of
organizing educational activities in accordance with the content, object and concrete
conditions.
Student appraisal at primary education level
Student’s achievement appraisal through subjects and educational activities in
each class and by the end of a level is to define the achievement level of educational
goals bringing about the adjustment to education process in order to contribute to
education quality, to encourage students to learn and be confident in learning process.
In that sense, student appraisal must : a) Ensure the objectiveness, comprehensive,
scientism and honesty; b) Be based on the knowledge, skill and attitude standards of each
subject and educational activity in a specific grade and the entire level; c) Incorporate
between regular evaluation and periodical appraisal; between the evaluation of teacher
and self-appraisal of student; between the evaluation of school and the evaluation of
family, community; d) Incorporate between multiple choice testing and other scoring
methods.
Some subject, such as: Vietnamese, mathematic, Science, History and Geography
are evaluated by grading combining with the evaluation of teacher; other subjects and
educational activities are evaluated based on teacher evaluation. The principle of primary
school designs the weekly teaching plan based on education plan and curriculum of
subjects, characteristics of the school and community.
III. Review the new primary curriculum after 3 rounds of implementation –
achievements and challenges
1. Achievements
- Vietnam’s new primary curriculum has followed the advanced trends in
curriculum development of the world. It displayed ideas and methods of curriculum
design, content of program and teaching method.
-
Building a national united curriculum for the entire basic education system;
-
Developing concrete standards for every grade and subject;
-
Emphasizing the most important point - renewing teaching method
Vietnam’s primary curriculum has the some characteristics which are similar with
those of many other countries like:
-
Objective: responsive to the demand of socio-economic development of the
country.
-
Comprehensive and relevant
-
Universialization and development
-
Up to date and practical
Namely:
- Developing comprehensive education through subjects and educational activities
- In general, the standards of knowledge and basic skills of Mathematic and
Vietnamese attains the level of developed countries in the region and in the world.
- The program decreased the academic dimension, increased in practice, apply and
attach to real life, integrated some of the world emergency issues (for example:
population education, environment protection education, children right education...)
updated with technology development, economic-social development in consistent with
the international integration of the country; increase the application to real life; concern
about life skills (through citizenship education, Nature and Social, Science Subjects.)
- Comparing with previous curriculum, the new program has been focused on the
integration and combination among many subjects in order to synthesize subjects. For
example: to integrate health care content in Natural and Social subject in Grade 1,2,3, in
Science subject in Grade 4,5 ( previously health subject is a distinct subject)
- The program starts with classification and creates opportunity for learners to
make choice. Elective teaching content besides the certain frame curriculum in order to
meet the demand for pupil’s ability development. Besides required subjects, from the
grade 3 there are selective subjects such as English, Computer and others.
- The new curriculum concentrates on renewing teaching method by the trend of
active learning in order to build method and demand for self-learning; encouraging both
students and teacher to be more active, flexible, creative in teaching and learning. This is
relevant to development trend of many primary education curriculum in other countries
which emphasize on the philosophy of “learner-central”, “solving problem”, and
“practice” methods.
- The curriculum stipulates the time frame for each grade, for each topic in one
subject, and for each educational activity (inspire of stipulating the time frame for each
lesson as in the past). School, teacher can be flexible to identify the time frame for each
lesson, and also can choose appropriate contents relevant to the specific context of school
and community and the demand of pupils which help school flexibly build education plan
matching with material conditions, teacher capacity and the knowledge of the pupils.
-
Textbooks were written by new curriculum which made good result in
orientation, encouraging self-learning, gaining knowledge. The textbooks demonstrate
clearly requirement for practice, applying knowledge to practice; be convenient for
teaching method focusing on active learning.
2. After 5 years of developing, the new primary curriculum has bring clear changes
in education quality.
- Education quality has been increased gradually. In general, pupils have enjoyment
and confidence to learn, creating self-learning habit, have more confident; be agile and
good in communication.
- The curriculum, especially new textbooks help to promote the renovation process in
teaching methods. Teaching quality of teachers are improved to meet the demand of the
new curriculum.
- After 5 years of renovation, teacher contingent and facilities of schools has been
improved clearly. The ratio of class/classroom and the number of 3-shift classroom has
been reduced . The percentage of pupils attending two session per day have been
increased (from 24,2 in 2002-2003 to 36,05 in 2006-2007). The number of standardized
teachers have been increasing (87,57% in 2002-2003 to 97,04 in 2006-2007)
The challenges
1. Besides the achievement, there are still limitations and difficulties in renovating
curriculum and textbooks:
- Compare to education curriculum in developed countries, some subjects like Art,
Physical exercise and Foreign language are limited; application in informatics technology
to teaching and learning process is still limited.
- Some subjects are lengthy, heavy for students especially those in difficult areas.
- Some of the textbooks are used for all of the region. In some subjects, the contents
are still heavy and difficult, not relevant to students in disadvantaged areas.
- The integration among subjects are not clear such as: history and geography;
handicraft, fine arts and music; in some places, there is no obvious linkages among
subjects; the duplication is still existed (such as citizenship education and Vietnamese).
Those are reasons for the heavy and lengthy of the curriculum.
2. Shortages in the deployment of the new curriculum and textbooks.
- The time frame volume for study and educational activities is at the lowest level
in the region and in the world. The learning hour in primary education of Vietnam is just
equal to 1/3 or ½
of the other countries. (Most of the country spend from 38-40
weeks/year while Vietnam spends just lower than 35 weeks per year.
- The capacity of a contingent of teacher is limited in meeting the demand for
renovation of content and teaching method. A number of the teacher can not
acknowledge the need for renovation, reluctant to change (due to habit, evaluation
methods). The renovation in teaching method is not effective enough. There is a lack of
teachers for specialized subjects such as music, fine arts.
- The number of students per class is still high, especially in rural and big city.
- The facility of school is limited, many schools lack of teacher room, playground,
sport court.
- There is an conflict between the need for a quality, comprehensive education
approaching world advanced level and the shortage of resources such as teacher,
management capacity, facility; between ensuring the unification across the country and
the gap among regions.
Solutions:
Short-term solutions:
- Considering the adjustments some of the subject from compulsory to selective one.
Schools and students select the content of teaching and learning in accordance with the
specific circumstance of schools, community , capacity of teacher and student’s ability.
Building manuals to guild teachers to teach based on knowledge and skill standards;
identifying clearly the content relevant to student ability and students from different
locality and minority.
- Long-term solutions: study on building a new basic education curriculum in the future.
The new curriculum will allow the integration some of the subjects; create opportunity
for selecting leaning contents; turn the teaching process in to a self-learning with the
instruction from facilitators; increase extra activities for students. Based on the standard
curriculum, guiding the implementation and teaching contents relevant with the education
demand, characteristics of each locality especially with ethnic minority. Constructing a
textbook set based on national curriculum which is examined by Ministry of Education
and Training. Localities have a right to select and use the textbooks.
Reference
1. Ministry of Education and Training (2006). Primary Education Curriculum
2. Ministry of Education and Training (2007). Report of 5 years after starting new
Primary Education Curriculum
3. Vietnam Institute of Science Education (2007). Ministerial level research work:
Comparing Vietnam Primary education curriculum to with those of other countries.
4. Ministry of Education and Training (2008). Evaluation Report of new education
Curriculum and textbooks.