Reforming holistically an educational sy

A DRAFT VERSION Reforming holistically an educational system Nguyễn Duy Khang Current: University of Gdansk Affiliation: Vinh Long Community College Every educator can feel when an educational system should be changed A similar situation happens quite late as it should be Educators have limited “real” roles in working with the general policies in education In the world, if any reforms are rooted from the top desires and views of the government, that education system will not prolong with new achievements but chaos In a different situation, the coming 5th reform1 of Vietnamese education is a result from one of the real red alarming cases happening in the society: useless trained workers, “disability”2 undergraduates, school issues, and so on For most researchers and writers, if they want to mention any ideas, they review the literature and state their own with the compatible, contradictory, or neutral versions from other popular people or scholars In this version, to avoid being affected with other thoughts because later or sooner this attempt will become “garbage” as usual3, the book will express the bare views on education from personal experiences and from analyzing the possibility in the legal documents of the coming reform in 2015 The good signals of a new education reform Vietnamese citizen has received a great signal from Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), the government, and Ministry of Education and Training for the new reform of education starting in 2015 The first legal and directed document point out this reform is the Resolution no294 for renovating basically and holistically education and training in Vietnam The others documents are Direction no025 of the Prime Minister, Conclusion no516 of Vietnamese Communist Party, and Decision no 12157 of the Minister of Education and Training The fifth time of reforming education is counted by the author, not official “disability” in this case means that the undergraduates fail to enter the real world and become “jobless” The ideas will be distorted to suit the happiness of others and when that happens, it becomes “garbage” Resolution 29-NQ/TW dated 04/11/2013 issued by Vietnamese Communist Party on the 8th meeting of the XIth session about renovating basically and holistically education and training Direction 02/CT-TTg dated 22/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister about renovating basically and holistically education and training Draft version – NDK / P a g e | All of these documents together focus on the importance of renovating the current system of education The top-down system of management shows that the Decision 1215 will include the action plans which will actively intervene into the current system for the reforming process The Decision has more detailed goals and purposes which directly propose the possible ways for current problems of education and training in the country This Decision promises a bright future for Vietnamese education which inherits the achievements during the past time After different reforms, several massive plans every five years, and various projects for education, Vietnam has reached some major success which is visible to every citizen from reports and news: available large-scale of educational system, fast development, more achievement in ensuring equality among group of learners and those from different economic conditions, the recognized intellectual level, upgraded teaching and managing staffs, having positive management tasks, more facilities investing in education, and the process of internationalization education with more positive results From the authority view, the aforementioned success is from the tradition of fondness for learning, the great care from central leading organizations, the society, and each family The teaching and management staffs also bring values to it Last but not least, the stability of political system and opened-policies for international integration also contribute a lot into the success of education and training until now Moreover, Decision 1215 will continue these achievements and develop Vietnamese education into a new level with two phases The first one is from 2013 to 2015 and the second one is from 2016 to 2020 Within this time limitation, the first phase consists of eight main focuses - - Refining the project of renovating basically and holistically education and training in order to upgrade the human resources, meet the needs of industrialization and modernization in the free market, and integrate to the international contexts Renovating the educational management by checking the irrelevant legal documents, increasing management, guiding the local educational authorities to implement education in accordance with the plenary plan, verifying the management ability of the local areas, fixing the bad effects of extra classes and negative examination, restructuring part-time education and cooperation with foreign countries, universalizing kindergarten for year-old kids, elementary, and high school, and to diversifying learning approaches and lines for purposes of lifelong learning, directing the enhancement of students evaluating teachers in the pilot to consider for massive application, increasing the effective th th Conclusion 51-KL/TW dated 29/10/2012 issued by XI Vietnamese Communist Party on the Congress about the central ideas for project of reforming education and training in the period to 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training Decision 1215/QĐ-BGDĐT dated 04/04/2013 issued by Minister of Education and Training about the action plans to implement the strategy of educational development from 2011 to 2020 Draft version – NDK / P a g e | - - - - management at institutional levels, building a national frame about diploma and degrees, pushing the educational accreditation, and changing the ways to collect data and analysis to effectively solve the problems of education and training Developing the teaching and managing staffs through enhancing the control education from the central to local areas, implementing the pedagogical development plan to 2020, upgrading regularly teachers at kindergarten, in-service training, and regular education according to the standards of each position, improve the policies for teaching and managing staffs, training or sending teachers abroad for doctoral studies, and training teachers for special army courses Renovating the contents, teaching methods, testing, examining, and evaluating the quality of education through activating the project of renewing curriculum and textbooks for general education after 2015, checking regularly curriculum and textbooks at school levels, implementing the project of changing teaching methods, encouraging research at high school, expanding the cases for the chance to study sessions in the whole day to kindergarten, elementary and junior high school, directing effectively the national exams, directing the colleges and universities to check the outcome criteria to meet the need of the society, renovating managing and training in the self-control orientation of the institutes, directing continuously the application of credit system in higher education, improving the informational system of higher education management, completing the decree about ranking educational institutes, developing training curriculum in two orientations of researching and career application, speeding up training to meet the social needs, conducting the project of building learning society8 to 2020 and project to eliminate illiteracy, implementing comprehensively the project of teaching and learning foreign languages in the national educational system from 2008 to 2020 focusing on training teachers, restructuring, modifying testing methods and planning new programs basing on the European framework of language capacity, and boosting the application of information technology into education from 2013 to 2018 for more new subjects Increasing the investments and renewing the financial structures in education through calling for investment to education, socializing some public services, improving the effectiveness of investments in education, restructuring the pricing system of education, enhancing the control on establishing new colleges and universities, studying the reality of building excellent universities with Germany, Russia, and England…, building researching universities, and speeding up the construction of high school with national standards Improving the support to education in remote area, areas with ethnics groups, and the beneficiary of social welfare through directing the controlling system for policy to teachers in these areas, checking for irrelevant issues and documents to fix them, expanding the chances for ethnics people, disable people, and homeless children with scholarship, credit, and enrolment policies, developing the general education for ethics people, training for labour in the countryside, teaching Vietnamese and ethnic languages at high school, and concentrating on cementing the schools in the remote areas - Developing scientific technology and educational science through increasing the number of researchers, investing in laboratories, upgrading the researching staffs in education to build up the Vietnamese educational science, sending staffs to learn and research abroad, and calling for famous scientists from outside with special policies Decision 89/QĐ-TTg dated 09/01/2013 by The Prime Minister for the approval of Project to build the learning society to 2020 Draft version – NDK / P a g e | - Improving the effectiveness of international cooperation in education and training through calling for investment in education and research from outside, training the teaching and managing staffs abroad, building projects on integrating in education and career education, and paying attention to policies and scholarships for foreign learners to study and research in Vietnam The second phase from 2016 to 2020 consists of nine main points - - - - Continuing to renovating education and training for the purposes of adapting to the requirements of industrializations and modernization in the conditions of free market with the socialist orientation and international integration Implementing the top-down management system with one highest organization and restructuring the state body of education Implementing the project of renovating the curriculum of general education, career education, university, English, information technology, and those in the first phase Continuing the implementation of human resource projects in all levels of educational management and implementing the program of upgrading science of pedagogy and in pedagogical institutions from 2011 to 2020, training teachers for the project of changing textbooks of general education after 2015, and training more lecturers at doctoral level for colleges and universities Acting actively in the roles of advisor for the government, National Assembly to build teacher law and policies for teachers and educational managers, standardizing the teachers and educational management personnel, renovating the ways to design curriculum and regular upgrading programs for current the educational insiders, redesigning the ways of recruiting new teachers and rearranging those who are not qualified into other appropriate jobs Implementing the new policy of tuition to ensure the cost share among learners, schools, and the society Building and implementing projects, national programs, loans for facilities and education development Developing the network of educational research institiutes and concentrating on improving the research capacity of researchers in main pedagogical colleges and universities Building and implementing the policies to ensure the equality in education, continuing the learning society, supporting and putting in the priority the development of human resources for ethnics groups, difficult areas, the poor, and beneficiary of social welfare After thoroughly reading the Decision with two obvious phases, it can be seen that this reform of education and training promises a lot of large changes in the system The reforming plan cares almost every aspect of education from the teachers, textbooks, policies, equality, the poor, micro and macro programs, long-term and short-term plans, management system, etc Any educators and people who have read these documents, especially Decision 1215 will agree with the author that Vietnam will have a bright future soon The outsiders of education fields should believe in the new prospects as described above The Decision contains the “paper” promising ways to fix the current problems of education and lead it to the new level of international integration with high quality products Draft version – NDK / P a g e | In Nguyen Ba Thai (2006), the researcher analyzed the achievements and negative feedbacks from different reforms in the modern time from 1945 to now Different potentials of educational models have been introduced and piloted in the context Table shows different models of education Some of them have not applied officially yet and some of them are experienced deeply by the author, citizen, and the labor market Table 1: General advantages and disadvantages of applying different educational approaches in the society Source: Nguyen Ba Thai (2006) Type Regular, fulltime Advantages Massive training Disadvantages Applicable values Inflexible methods and the same requirements for all subjects can cause inequality in learners It is good for the regime of commanding to train for similar people and listen to the orders The government cannot afford the huge demands if everyone follows this type of education The poor with government supports can possibly follow this type of education It is difficult in management Not regular, part-time People with less time availability can follow It is a complicated case of management It is suitable for the remote areas and those who study part-time at the same time they work Education at home10 It is a convenient type of education with less expenses and suitable for individuals about both knowledge and approaches It is applicable for only rich families and parents are well-educated It is possible to expand this type if the family meets the quality standard and register for accreditation It is possible to reduce the learning time It is good to develop the group of training families in developing education in the remote areas and it can possibly expand larger in these areas with the management supports of the authority It can lead to the development of diversified teaching methods It allows the learners to learn in a flexible way rather than at schools Education at work11 It helps the current workers upgrade their abilities and skills The quality of training is not high These people need special supports from the budget of businesses in preparation for any changing in the structures of the economic system Distance learning12 Learners not have to go to the learning places It is difficult to accrediate the quality but it is promising with the global market This type is applicable from the advanced technology and those who want to learn in this education must master information technology at some It can be available throught out the country Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), Table on pages 152 and 153 Education at home is encouraged but the authority will not accept the results of this model Education must happen in a training center or school 11 Education at work is a great model in many developed countries; however, it causes negative effects more than quality in education School rarely sends teachers to companies to train them for better the quality and quantity of the working skills Businesses and educational institutes have not had a strong links and comprehensive level Education at work is mostly available for training people who have a job but the fact is opposite in most cases 12 Distance learning appears recently and turns to be popular 10 Draft version – NDK / P a g e | First investment in facility is too high with IT tools and internet Learners must be able to self-study well Self-learning13 It is the least expense type of education and convenient It has the characteristics of individual and hard to be common Knowledge and skills develop in a natural and sustainable way It is the closest form to doing research levels The government needs to consult learners and have policies to protect the learners It is based on the learner’s own spirit This type of learning must be encouraged and accreditated and get supports from state and regular educational institution This type of education should be trained from the young age Learning in educational companies This type is new in the free market and global economic in foreign languages and some other fields This is more with doing business and suitable with the learning needs of learners The quality is hard to be controlled and if it is expanded, the learners and the market will directly check the quality without the intervention of the authority This type of education will develop very fast in the global economic when most of other types cannot meet the needs of the citizen The government needs to protect the learners’ interests if these companies bankrupt In any countries, if a reform is directed and approved by almost all levels of the society, it is promising to be successful This reform of Vietnam has the approvals and directions of the government, the National Assembly, the highest leaders of education and training, and optimistic citizen However, many vital points are missed from finding the core issues, no certain results should be stated at this point Reasons leading the educational reform to the dead end In a contrary side, it is a belief that this massive reform will bring to the society no big change in education and training Many root reasons are keeping the Decision and the spirit of changing education into actions It happens everywhere in the world and in any educational reforms if it does not pay attention to the correct roots of issues Vietnamese educational situations and the reforming planning actions are carefully studied and analyzed for the strengths, weaknesses, and roots of the issues However, the attitudes to education and the education philosophies in chaos cannot give a clear view to these insiders of the field If the insiders can find the problems but not the core ones, what the outsiders of education can rely on The following analysis focuses on pointing out the main issues in current picture which 13 Self-learning is encouraged by the teachers and the society but it is not counted as official notification Like education at home, it is for self-improvement rather than to be accepted by any places Draft version – NDK / P a g e | has not been recognized yet The analysis will lead the readers the possible failure of this reform from the author bare views In a research14, educational reform should refer to the following matter in a logical way First, that reform must change the general educational thoughts and then renovate the pedagogical science Next, educational purposes must be considered for reform After that, the system of education should be renovated and for that reason the ways to manage educational resources turn to be very important for consideration The last steps are restructuring the knowledge contents, teaching methods, and evaluation system15 In a scientific way, it is worth to consult these matters before reforming an educational system If so, the master plan of reform in this context shows a vague future It is hard to find information about educational thought and educational purposes The rest is mentioned in a general way For example, two of the actions for reforming education are to develop scientific technology and educational science through increasing the number of researchers, investing in laboratories, and upgrading the researching staffs in education to build up the Vietnamese educational science16 and to implement the program of upgrading science of pedagogy17 The question here is how much time it should take for the above actions happen Who should become the “experiment mice” again when no philosophies are available at the moment or seen to be accepted in the society? What people are trying will not return with success It is not simple that a series of reforms in Vietnam ending with failure It is not easy because educational reform is a very complicated process with different affected factors Regardless any literature, any philosophers, education should depart from its natures The current reforming plans seem to be good though it is very general from the “top-down point of views”18 Educational authorities usually think that negative issues of education are mostly from bad management system That is why a large portion of the plans is for enhancing the quality of management and restructuring the system The actions are too general and focus on important aspects of education, but not the core ones The society and every body know that teachers and learners want to teach and study in their own free ways; however, the educational management system with “too advanced knowledge19” has refused or prohibited 14 Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006) Các cải cách giáo dục Việt Nam: Lịch sử học kinh nghiệm (The former reforms in education of Vietnam: History and experienced lessons) Research Project at Ministry level Project code: B2003 – 52 - 38 15 Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), page 124 16 Decision 1215, phase 17 Decision 1215, phase 18 Author opinion is from the feeling that most plans are too general and the roots of negative issues in education possibly from the ignorances about the learners and teachers The plans are more to control than to facilitate the inner changes from the insiders of education 19 Author opinion for stupid or fake intelligent educational leaders at almost all levels nowadays Draft version – NDK / P a g e | most of them Currently, teachers are prohibited to change without approvals and learners are forced to study what they may not want to learn In fact, every teacher in this world, not just in Vietnam, will never be able to continue the job after a few years because it is very challenging Every teacher wants their learners to develop in a way that they feel most comfortable Every teacher adapts him or herself very frequently in every class to make sure that every teaching period is the last teaching time ever For that reason, management is good and essential but no authorities have shown to care whatever and whether the insiders need these new intensive ways of controlling or not That will lead to a possible failure soon In addition, it is quite interesting that the reforming plans also focus on changing the teaching methods It is great, teaching methods are important to help learners learn better However, as one of the outsiders of education, it is not acceptable for a massive plan as a result from nothing Educational leaders usually blame for the negative issues of education or low quality of training because teachers are using traditional methods of teaching20 From teachers’ perspectives, they complain of having no chance when the class size is always large Teaching content and time for teaching caught the most attention of education controller or the bosses The authority does not care anything else but the presence of teachers during the class time Back to changing methods in the plenary plan, it is ridiculous when the top-down views not care about the reasons why teachers select the best teaching methods for them Changing the teaching methods will never bring a good result in this reform because teachers always try to select the best ways to help their learners learn And if that selection is traditional method, there should be many reasons If these reasons are not over, they have very limited chance to reform In any situations, the nature of any reforms or changes should be from within For this case, the reforms should be from the heart of teachers and learners Vietnamese society has experienced similar changes throughout the history and when talking about education, they forget that every adjustment should be from the bottom-up In pedagogy of the oppressed21, renovation with similar situations usually fail because of many reasons All of the reasons are mostly from the oppressed and here can be seen as teachers and learners because they have limited voice and are not free for their ways of teaching In Vietnam, teaching and learning must follow the rules inside the fence of time and place Freire shows that any renovation should be from the oppressed because the oppressed will try to resist from the changes if they 20 This point is mentioned forever in every educational report But it is not the real story No teachers accept to use traditional teaching methods if their learners not like it Is there any other factors prevent them to change when learners these days are very active and done well with technology of massive information sources? 21 Paulo Freire philosophy of education Draft version – NDK / P a g e | not want In another consequence, he also advises that freedom is a double-edge sword Teachers and learners want to be free in their teaching and some feel that they not know what to However, when too much control is pushing to the teaching and learning, they will decide to mute or fight Similarly, Vietnamese tradition leads teachers to mute their desire for a better education system, thought, goals, and philosophy For this reason, if the top-down views not recognize the issues of the insiders, the reform will fail again as usual Furthermore, if teachers teach what learners want to study, they will fail the final high school exams because the knowledge must be from the textbooks In recent years, teachers are encouraged to decide what to cut off from the textbooks and have some right for a certain percentage of adapted knowledge from reality However, no variation in examinations is realized Learners at different levels of education have to pay much attention to rote learning with knowledge from the assigned textbooks Most educators know but the educational leaders forget that knowledge and information are available everywhere and changed rapidly It seems that this reform will fail when they consider learners outside of their plans It will fail again when learners need to practice their skills rather than memorization Learners are in a fence rather than in a learning community like schools If the focus of education remains unchanged, learners have to suffer forever with learning as struggling If they follow any ways of learning for creativity or being critical, they will fail to continue their proper education because the exams them to tell what they know, not what they can from such a long time at schools This aspect shows that if the educational thought and philosophy stay the same, the reform will make no success In a different aspect, it is easy to find in the action plans of the reform that the central educational management will enhance training teachers for the project of changing textbooks of general education after 2015 or boosting regular training for teachers every year Is there any things wrong here? No, the policy is excellent However, who knows the real problems? Teachers must take regular upgrading training every year and the textbooks are still out of dated What have they been trained? And who have trained teachers? It could be one of the two following cases First, teachers are too stupid to understand the training Second, the trainers train something teachers cannot use Both reasons are comprehensive because the educational authority always sees teachers as a burden with traditional teaching methods and as the boss, teachers must be trained and guided again and again No one cares about the effectiveness of these training occasions What they care? Will the reform be success with similar ways of thinking? If teachers are under qualifications, why does that happen? If this reform just focuses on what they want regardless heart of educational activities, it will never gets close to the success Draft version – NDK / P a g e | In fact, it is not too complicated to reform Vietnamese education successfully It can happen only if the leaders of education and training try to listen to teachers and learners They should change their views on education and put some thoughts to find the roots of negative issues and what prevent education to develop One of the best ways is that they should carefully check themselves because all the problems of education are the feedback from the society Learners are not free in their fences of education Teachers are told to be free in teaching what are good for their learners, except that the examinations must follow the unique textbooks The heart of education is for learners and those who directly teach them – teachers and the community Education should happen not only at school If the reform does not meet the above drawbacks, success never comes Current comprehensive challenges before reforming Vietnamese education The coming reform of Vietnamese education is facing several challenges If the educational leaders not pay much attention to the cores of issues, it will become a failure later or sooner It can be easily divided the challenges into internal and external categories In the internal aspects, many challenges can be counted as follows - The training quality is quite low22 with weak effectiveness - Young learners are trained to become good obeyers rather than critical people - The training programs are more theoretical than practical - The evaluation methods are not flexible and measure the wrong ways - Kids are scaring of schooling Students feel bored with classes - Lessons focus less on the values of ethics, skills, and attitudes - Learners are forced to study irrelevant courses regardless objections - Learners learn to compete at school in a wrong manner rather than about peace and the love of learning - Teachers have to fulfill too many other tasks different from teaching - The flu of achievements is killing the heart and enthusiasm of teachers and heartfelt educators because achievements are understood as for the bosses - Teaching methods are encouraged to bring variety at the same time with the “unchanged” ways of evaluation for both teachers and learners as numbers - Transferring among different educational institutions is limited - Personnel in education and training have not improved their ability for a long time which leads to more and more negative issues 22 Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006), page 126 – the italics challenges are collected and translated from this source Draft version – NDK / P a g e | 10 - Some teachers are seen by the top-down views as lacking of enthusiasm and qualifications - Number of educators and managers are insufficient in both quality and quantity In the external aspects, the following can be seen as current challenges - The connections among educational institutions and the labor market are very loose - The labor market does not find their needs to be noticed at training institutions - Investment in education is usually ineffective - Inappropriate policies in education are maintained too long on purposes by some individuals - Inequality in education is obvious from the city to the remote areas - Some rules, decisions, or some articles of the laws are ignored by the citizen and schools - Internationalization in education turns to be mess in higher education due to top-down management system - Accreditation is new in Vietnam and the rising number of education institutes becomes chaos At first, the reform seems to be a good plan with supports from all levels of authorities and sound workable However, with the aforementioned challenges and analyzing the wrong and out-of-dated “top-down views” on education, there is very little signal of success If this reform wants a focus, it should be discussed by the citizen, learners, teachers, and educators; not the bosses23 in education The nature of education is “love” Only with love, education will be renovated Nevertheless, the learning demands of the society are rapidly increasing in comparison to the attitudes and thoughts of educational leaders who reach the deadlock In order that, the strategies are to open more schools and diversify more types of education It sounds meaningful if the educational personnel dealing with this matter work effectively and responsibly For that reason, more schools bring more problems with quality and scandals Negative issues appear every day but people are bored of being involved for fun No one listens to the bottom as from teachers, learners, and parents from average economic to poor conditions Last but not least, the philosophies of education, the goals, and the educational mindsets of the authorities are undervalued and not function well in guiding the education to go through the new turning-points An example in higher education is that many colleges and universities are brand-new The Ministry of Education and Training allows them to offer similar courses without any smart thinking In one province, three colleges and universities have the right to enroll new learners A community college has some junior college programs like technical food processing, agriculture, information technology, and so on; two universities have the same program names A specialized university in construction field can enroll learners in businesses and social sciences In brief, this example is just 23 The author opinion is that educational bosses are usually stubborn and stupid Draft version – NDK / P a g e | 11 to show the carelessness and unthoughtful decisions of most educational leaders who really have the right of making decisions All in all, the challenges of current situations will strongly affect the process of reforming educational system It is hard to have a guess at this moment and the citizen has to wait until the educational leaders decide to have a look at their mindsets and the important roles of the insiders that education serves them If the educators and scholars question about the philosophies of Vietnamese education in the new era and the answer is again the Resolution 29, dreams never come true Conclusion Education has vital roles in any society Reforming education is a very complicated action and Vietnam has experienced the failures for many times Many lessons are learned from the former renovations Many actions have been planned and implemented All again will bring no success if the real roots of educational issues are not paid attention One of the common failures of every reform is that people try to fix the surface problems, not the roots and from within If education is seen in a micro and macro ways, they are too busy with the approaches Therefore, people usually forget to care about the real core of the issues which urge the authority to the decision of reforming education If it is considered, the nature of education means that learners and the love of education should take interests from the educational outsiders and the bottom The reason is simple because no echo of these people can reach the top views of educational leaders For a bright future of education for the next generations of Vietnam, the outsiders should be united to fix the malfunctions of the educational love within first and then prepare a new mindset for learners to deal with their freedom in education, creativity, critical ability, ethics education, physical education, and love of lifelong learning Education needs to develop learners holistically It should not focus on transmitting as much knowledge as possible If the new reform can concentrate on learners to train them not to mute and obey at school but be creative and skillful If this goal is set, teachers will need a real heart with passion to facilitate this form of learning Learning should be conducted at the same time with learning and application24 However, it is not easy at all and no regular training from the educational authority can possibly it (regardless who is the trainers, is the educational mindset changed?) Teachers with passions will change themselves and adapt to the new philosophy and teaching environments with new generation of active learners 24 Ho Chi Minh’s philosophy of education Draft version – NDK / P a g e | 12 Last but not last, in a free form of education, both teachers and learners should be prepared for the new meaningful assessment system which will not base only on exams The types of evaluation should be varied and even the testing items should be considered to test what levels of learning25 too The evaluating methods can include observation with rubrics, interaction situation, reflections, solving problems and making decisions, and application levels It is not easy for both important subjects in education to familiarize with new evaluating methods More training in this field is essential rather than caring about the textbooks and the surface issues To sum up, if people who have the right to change not carefully think and care about the proposed ideas, no one could blame them but the educational reform will not bring much benefit to those who should get Reform needs passion and love of education from the insiders and pushes from the outsiders at the same time References Conclusion 51-KL/TW dated 29/10/2012 issued by XIth Vietnamese Communist Party on the 6th Congress about the central ideas for project of reforming education and training in the period to 2020 of the Ministry of Education and Training Decision 1215/QĐ-BGDĐT dated 04/04/2013 issued by Minister of Education and Training about the action plans to implement the strategy of educational development from 2011 to 2020 Decision 89/QĐ-TTg dated 09/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister for the approval of Project to build the learning society to 2020 Direction 02/CT-TTg dated 22/01/2013 issued by The Prime Minister about renovating basically and holistically education and training Nguyễn Bá Thái (2006) Các cải cách giáo dục Việt Nam: Lịch sử học kinh nghiệm (The former reforms in education of Vietnam: History and experienced lessons) Research Project at Ministry level Project code: B2003 – 52 - 38 Resolution 29-NQ/TW dated 04/11/2013 issued by the XIthVietnamese Communist Party on the 8th Congress about renovating basically and holistically education and training 25 Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains Available online at http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html Draft version – NDK / P a g e | 13