Autonomy and acountability of vocational education institutions in Vietnam

What is the autonomy of vocational education institutions in Vietnam?

Pursuant to Clause 2, Article 7 of Circular 57/2015/TT-BLDTBXH, which stipulates the functions, powers, autonomy rights, and accountability of vocational education institutions

The autonomy and acountability of vocational education institutions are implemented in accordance with Article 25 of the Law on Vocational Education 2019 of Vietnam and several other provisions, specifically including:

- The vocational education institution has autonomy in its organization and personnel, finance and assets, training and technology, international cooperation, training quality assurance as prescribed; ensures accountability to the competent authorities, students and the social for the organization and management of its training activities and quality.

- The public vocational education institution which ensures its total regular investment expenditures shall have autonomy and take responsibility as prescribed in regulations of the Government.

- The vocational education institution which is incapable of self-responsibility or violates against the law in the process of enjoying the autonomy, it shall be restricted autonomy and subject to regulations of law.

- Determining objectives, missions, strategies, and development plans of the institution;

- Deciding on the establishment of an organizational structure, developing the teaching staff and management personnel based on the institution's strategic and developmental plans;

- Financial receipts and expenditures, investment for developing conditions ensuring training quality as prescribed by law; determining tuition fees corresponding with the conditions ensuring training quality for high-quality training programs and financial autonomy regulations for vocational education centers;

- Enrolling and managing learners; developing training programs; organizing the compilation or selection of teaching materials suitable for each training program's objectives; printing certificate forms, managing, and issuing certificates to learners as regulated by law;

- Organizing and implementing scientific and technological research activities, international cooperation as per the center's strategic and developmental plans; ensuring the center's training quality; choosing vocational education quality assessment organizations for registration;

- Developing organizational and operational regulations of the center; stipulating the functions and tasks of the organizations within the center.

Autonomy and acountability of vocational education institutions in Vietnam (Image from the Internet)

What is the acountability of vocational education institutions in Vietnam?

Pursuant to Clause 3, Article 7 of Circular 57/2015/TT-BLDTBXH, the accountability of vocational education institutions are stipulated as follows:

Vocational education institutions are accountable to competent state agencies, learners, and the society for the following activities:

- Publicly announcing training objectives, programs; conditions ensuring the quality of teaching and learning; tuition fees and their waivers, reductions; training quality assessment results; the center's certification system; job positions after graduation, and measures for monitoring and inspecting training quality;

- Committing to state management agencies and being responsible for all activities to achieve these commitments; not allowing any individual or organization to exploit the fame or facilities of the center to conduct activities contrary to the law and the Vocational Education Center's charter;

- Establishing mechanisms for learners, teachers, and society to participate in the evaluation of the center's training quality;

- Reporting and explaining issues related to inspection and examination as required by competent agencies.

What policies are benefited by vocational education institutions?

According to Article 26 of the Law on Vocational Education 2019, vocational education institutions, including vocational education centers, benefit from the following policies:

- Acquire land through land allocation or lease by the State; receive incentives for credit to invest in facilities and improve the training quality; tax incentives in accordance with regulations of law on taxation; tax exemption from the undivided income in the vocational education to invest in development; tax exemption and reduction as prescribed in regulations on profits earned from products or services of the training activities; tax incentives applied to the production, business or services conformable with the training activities, publishing of teaching materials, production and provision of training equipment, import of books, newspaper, materials and training equipment;

- Participate in tender, receive the training order of the State as prescribed in law on tender, orders for public services using government budget.

- Apply for capital incentives from domestic and foreign programs or projects;

- Participate in programs for training of domestic and foreign vocational educators or administrative officials using the funding from the government budget;

- Support the investment to ensure the requirements in order to accept upper-secondary ethnic boarding school graduates to apprentice;

- Support development in training of disciplines meeting study demands of the workers working abroad;

- Incentive policies on private sector involvement as prescribed.