The majority of school board members remain 'principal's men'

At the seminar "University autonomy - what opportunities for development?", organized by the Government Electronic Information Portal on the afternoon of July 11, Associate Professor, Dr. Luu Bich Ngoc stated that in recent times, university autonomy has become a driving force to promote the development of the domestic higher education system.

However, she said that in the past 10 years, the speed of university autonomy has been "a bit slow" compared to the wishes of the Party, the State, and society. There are three main reasons for this.

Firstly, society and higher education institutions in Vietnam have recently had a wrong understanding of university autonomy.

"The government has issued policies to increase university autonomy but has cut budget investment, which means university autonomy means that educational institutions have to take care of themselves," she said.

Second, the conflict in power, administration and management. Currently, higher education institutions still have overlaps between the school council, the party committee and the school board, leading to ineffectiveness in the internal administration of higher education institutions.

Third, the autonomy mechanism is not really open. When autonomous, higher education institutions must still comply with the systems and legal documents of the State.

"However, there is no consistency or synchronization between these laws, and there are still "cross-cutting" each other," said Ms. Ngoc.

Ms. Ngoc added that the school administration at public higher education institutions currently has many bottlenecks that have not been resolved. These include the formality in the design and the role of the school board in public higher education institutions.

"We have a school council, but the majority of the members of the school council are still 'the principal's people', including key school leaders, key leaders of departments, most of whom are still under the principal's management.

"Leadership and management power are not clearly defined between the Party Committee, the school council and the principal, which reduces the motivation to promote autonomy and innovation. This problem needs to be resolved," Ms. Ngoc emphasized.

With the establishment of a school council between the member school council and the university council in the national university model, she believes that this is an overlap and ineffectiveness in governance.

Lieutenant General, Professor, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Yem - Director of the Institute of Non-Traditional Security, School of Business and Administration, Vietnam National University, Hanoi - said that to innovate education and training, considering this a breakthrough, we must increase the authority of principals.

All school innovation must start with teachers, especially principals, who determine the innovation and success of education and training.

"Currently, there are many mechanisms, however, for public schools, we have a party executive committee, so we should not establish a school council. The party committee, in a sense, is essentially a school council," Mr. Yem shared.

Besides, he believes that to innovate education and training, there must be a new concept and new thinking about teachers. According to him, teachers today must not only be good at teaching and scientific research but also good at practice.

"The teaching staff is not just part-time, they must participate in management and teaching organization; places that teach economics must have the participation of economic activists and business directors to teach students how to get rich.

"Teachers who do not know how to enrich themselves cannot teach others how to enrich themselves. This is a reality," said Mr. Yem.