By 2022, Vietnamese educators will have something they didn't have before: options.
As the country's education system undergoes a facelift, the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) is commissioning a new series of textbooks for grade school students which will give teachers a range of government-approved textbooks from which to choose, reports Zing.
In 2014, officials began restructuring the country's textbooks, calling upon education experts to assist in penning these new materials. Previously, Vietnam's textbooks were written by government officials and only one book was available for each subject area.
Now, in an attempt to soften be-all, end-all stance of a singular textbook, MoET officials are implementing a “one program, multiple textbooks” system, in which the government will approve multiple versions of a textbook in one subject area, affording educators across the country the opportunity to select the textbook most suitable for their school.
In an analysis of the new textbook policy, Nakazawa University doctoral fellow Nguyen Quoc Vuong stresses that this does not mean a division of educational materials along regional lines but rather based upon the educational needs of that area. Vuong also emphasizes that all textbooks must still receive approval from MoET officials.
Moving forward, grades 1, 6 and 10 will transition from the old textbooks to new versions this year. Other grades will begin to follow in July of this year, and the entire program will reach completing in 2022.
[Photo via Thanh Nien]
