Lang Son education-training sector follows Uncle Ho’s teaching

(LSO) – Speaking to foreign reporters in early 1946, President Ho Chi Minh said that “I only have one desire, an ultimate desire that the country be independent and the people be completely free, everyone has enough food, clothing and housing, and everyone can access education…”. Over the past more than 70 years, the education sector of Lang Son has been working hard to realise the late leader’s wish.

   Education for all

Immediately after the success of the August Revolution, Lang Son had only several schools, mostly at district towns and the provincial capital, with only more than 40 teachers at pre-school and primary levels. Along with reinforcing the administration, encouraging locals to strengthen production and preparing for the long resistance war, the provincial administration paid great attention to education.

As the French colonists returned to Vietnam, under the motto of “fighting enemy and building nation at the same time,” in the first months of 1947, many new schools were constructed under the protection of the forest, and the schools were expanded throughout the resistance war.

Overcoming difficulties and staying persistent and creative in developing education, in 1954, Lang Son not only recorded strong progress in erasing illiteracy, but also sent 15,000 students to school, 10 times higher than the number in the 1945-1946 period, including 1,100 students at junior and senior high schools.

After the return of peace, the work on eradicating illiteracy was promoted stronger than ever. As of the end of 1946, Lang Son basically erased illiteracy in lower regions, with the ratio of literacy among people of schooling age reaching 90.33 percent.

Following the anti-US war, Lang Son education sector entered a new era with rapid changes. Together with completing the education system from pre-school to senior high school levels, and from continuing education to vocational education, the fight against illiteracy and the universalisation of education were intensified.

A teacher in Huu Lien commune’s elementary school in Huu Lung district teaches students from Dao ethnic minority group to read and write.  

Thanks to the efforts, in 1997, the province completed the eradication of illiteracy and the universalisation of elementary education. In 2004, the locality finished the universalisation of junior high education and getting all children at elementary school age to school. In 2016, it completed and maintained the outcomes of pre-school universalisation among five-year-old children.

At the end of the 2018-2019 academic year, all 226 communes, wards and towns as well as all 11 districts and cities of Lang Son maintained the standards in literacy. With the regular and non-regular education networks covering the entire province, Lang Son has become one of the provinces with high intellectual standard in the northern mountainous region, as one in every three locals go to school, and 99.98 percent of locals aging from 10-35 and 92 percent of people aging from 36-60 can read and write.

   Studying going along with practising

Uncle Ho’s teaching that studying must go along with practising, and schools must be close to the society has become a motto, target and method of the revolutionary education sector. Following the late leader’s teaching as well as resolutions of the Party on education and training, over the past nearly 75 years, Lang Son education sector has always combined theory and practice, study and production, thus training generations with good ethics and skills to serve the resistance war and national construction cause.

Today, amidst opportunities and challenges from the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the requirements of training “global citizens,” the resolution of the eighth session of the 11^th Central Committee on the basic and comprehensive reform of education and training has affirmed the goal of “building an open and practical education with strong performance in teaching, studying and management, striving to bring Vietnamese education to the advanced level in the region in 2030.”

Following the resolution, education establishments of Lang Son have strengthened the connection between schools and the economy, as well as the connectivity between the school and the society.

Diverse teaching forms have been developed such as the new school model VNEN (Global Partnership for Education –Vietnam Escuela Nueva project), and new teaching method that focuses on practicing, while the majority of schools have implemented STEM learning, attaching importance to science-technology research activities of students, and effectively exploiting the cultural heritage in teaching activities.

In the 2018-2019 academic year, local senior high schools held 150 trips to production and trade establishments to give vocational guidance to nearly 71,000 students, while junior high schools also organized 732 such programmes for nearly 87,000 students.

Schools have also implemented scientific research projects and held contests to evaluate research results and select outstanding projects to compete in a provincial competition.

The competitions drew 621 projects, of which 219 by individuals and 402 by collectives. Of the total, 323 research projects were done by junior high school students, up 41 projects compared to the previous academic year, while 298 implemented by senior high school students, a rise of 26 projects. Local students also won two third prizes and two fourth prizes at the national science-technology contest.

Thoroughly understanding Uncle Ho’s teaching and education viewpoint of the Party, Lang Son has made steady steps forwards to expand the people’s access to education service and ensure equality in education, thus enhancing people’s knowledge, training human resources, and finding and developing talents.

With the above achievements, Lang Son education sector is proud of its contributions to the whole national education sector in bringing Vietnam forward to the same level with other countries across the globe as Uncle Ho wished./.