Prime Minister: Fight corruption related to curriculum development and textbook printing

This afternoon (August 22), at the Government Headquarters, the Ministry of Education and Training held a conference to summarize the 2024-2025 school year and deploy tasks for the 2025-2026 school year. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended the conference.

The 2024-2025 school year is a breakthrough year in perfecting institutions and policies for education and training development. Notably, the promulgation of the Law on Teachers is an important milestone in honoring, caring for, protecting and developing the teaching staff.

The Ministry of Education and Training actively and proactively implements the work of reorganizing the apparatus and implementing two-level local government. In the 2024-2025 school year, the 2018 general education program will be implemented synchronously in all grades from grade 1 to grade 12 nationwide.

The Ministry of Education and Training has organized research and developed a project to make English a second language in schools; advised the Government to submit to the Politburo a resolution on educational breakthroughs, including making AI an official subject in the general education program.

Key education was effectively implemented with 33 medals of all kinds including 12 gold, 14 silver, and 7 bronze. International Olympic and international science and technology teams maintained the top 10 countries among 113 participating countries/territories.

Participating in the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad for the first time, Vietnam was in the group of 4 countries with the highest achievements; the International Informatics Olympiad team was in the group of 8 leading countries, and the Mathematics Olympiad team was in the group of 9 leading countries.

This result affirms the capacity and position of Vietnamese students in the field of science and technology, and at the same time shows the effectiveness of the work of discovering and nurturing talents to serve the development of high-quality human resources.

Training and fostering to improve the qualifications and capacity of the teaching staff continues to receive attention; the rate of teachers meeting the training standards according to the 2019 Education Law at preschool, primary and secondary levels increased compared to the previous school year. The education sector database system has been basically completed with more than 24 million records connected to the national database.

The online enrollment system on the National Public Service Portal has been completed at the "full-process" level, allowing 100% of candidates to register for the high school graduation exam and university and college admission completely online. More than 10 million transcripts and more than 1.5 million high school graduation diplomas have been digitized, synchronized to the Ministry's centralized database and synchronized with the national database.

At the conference, representatives of the Department of Education and Training and leaders of provinces and cities highlighted the results in the 2024-2025 school year and proposed solutions for the 2025-2026 school year.

Vice Chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Tran Thi Dieu Thuy said that Ho Chi Minh City always puts education development as its top priority. Special mechanisms and policies in the education sector are always given priority.

However, currently only about 50% of cultural and social officials have previously worked in the education sector, so they are still confused when approaching the task of managing education at the local level.

Vice Chairman of Tuyen Quang Provincial People's Committee Vuong Ngoc Ha proposed to urgently and effectively implement the investment policy to build boarding schools for primary and secondary levels in 248 land border communes.

"Early, effectively and clearly deploy the investment mechanism for building primary and secondary boarding schools in border communes.

This is a correct policy and meets the aspirations of people in border areas, creating very important conditions to increase the rate of student mobilization, attendance rate and contribute to the quality of education in mountainous areas, as well as contributing to firmly consolidating the people's border defense, protecting national border sovereignty" , said the Vice Chairman of Tuyen Quang Provincial People's Committee.

Opinions at the conference proposed preparing good conditions to ensure the gradual introduction of English as a second language in schools; promoting and improving the quality of education to develop digital capacity and education using artificial intelligence; proposing to supplement the teacher payroll for the period 2026 - 2030 to overcome the shortage of teachers, especially implementing teaching 2 sessions/day.

Opinions also suggested urgently completing the industry's databases, ensuring connection and interoperability of data within the industry with national databases, especially databases serving the provision of online public services.

Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Culture and Society Nguyen Dac Vinh requested the Ministry of Education and Training to urgently prepare a national target program on modernizing and improving the quality of education and training for the 2026-2035 period.

Continue to review and promptly adjust decentralization and delegation of authority in the field of education and training to ensure that it is consistent with the functions, tasks and organizational capacity of the four entities: Ministry, Department, People's Committee at commune level, and educational institutions, ensuring that State budget expenditure for education and training reaches at least 20%.

"The allocation of investment expenditure must reach at least 5% and expenditure on higher education must reach at least 3%. Focus on solutions to overcome the shortage of teachers in localities, especially for new subjects," said Mr. Nguyen Dac Vinh.

Fighting negativity and corruption related to curriculum development and textbook printing

Speaking at the conference, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh highlighted the bright spots of the education sector in 2024-2025, including perfecting institutions, mechanisms and policies; streamlining the apparatus; improving training quality at all levels; successfully organizing the Professional High School Graduation Exam; improving teacher quality; expanding cooperation, promoting international integration in education and training; increasingly spacious infrastructure for education and training; promoting breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and digital transformation and "early blooming talents".

The Prime Minister especially emphasized that the implementation of the 2018 general education program still has shortcomings, suggesting that it should be unified into one program, "not allowing a country to have two education programs".

"We must fight against negativity and corruption related to curriculum development, printing and selling textbooks. In the past, when we went to school during the war, we passed down a set of textbooks to each other and became successful. Now, why do we keep changing? Why not save? There must be a saving movement.

In the past, there was only one curriculum, now there are many programs to refer to, but there must still be a core curriculum. Textbooks are not only a responsibility and obligation to an education system, to a country, but also the heart of a person," the Prime Minister noted.

In the coming time, the Prime Minister requested the entire education and training sector to effectively implement the main guiding viewpoint: "Taking students as the center and subject - Teachers as the driving force - School as the support - Family as the fulcrum - Society as the foundation".

"Focus on transforming the state from considering education and training as the sole responsibility of the education sector to the common task of the entire political system, the entire people, and the entire society, and transforming the state from equipping knowledge to developing comprehensive capacity of learners," said the Prime Minister. All methodological thinking, approaches, and solutions to education and training issues must continue to be innovated, meaning that all citizens must have equal access to education and training, especially the disadvantaged, people in remote areas, border areas, islands, and ethnic minority areas.

Build a more advanced, modern and practical curriculum, suitable for the situation in Vietnam and the world.

Regarding specific tasks, the Prime Minister requested to focus on carefully preparing the necessary conditions for the new school year, including a nationwide online opening ceremony to the commune level (held on September 5, 2025); not to have a shortage of teachers, schools, food, or clothing.

Continue to improve institutions, enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of state management of education. Build and develop a team of teachers with adequate qualities and capacity, equal to the task. Focus on overcoming the surplus and shortage of teachers, ensuring the principle of "where there are students, there must be teachers in the classroom".

Pay attention to developing education for children and students in areas with difficult socio-economic conditions, ethnic minority areas, mountainous areas, border areas, and islands.

The Prime Minister also requested to prepare to thoroughly grasp and synchronously, resolutely and effectively implement the Politburo's Resolution on breakthroughs in education and training development as soon as the Resolution is issued.

Continue to review and plan the network of preschool, general education, continuing education, education for the disabled, university and college education, and vocational education. Improve the quality of human resource training, especially high-quality human resources associated with scientific research and innovation...

On the eve of the new school year, the Prime Minister wished the education and training sector and all teachers to always promote their sense of responsibility and enthusiasm for their profession, overcome all difficulties, persevere in the goal of fundamental and comprehensive innovation in education and training, and make an important contribution to bringing our country to steady development in the new era.

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/thu-tuong-chong-tham-nhung-lien-quan-xay-dung-chuong-trinh-in-sach-giao-khoa-ar961226.html