With the support of the Vietnamese-German Technical Cooperation Programme Reform of TVET in Viet Nam (GIZ), on August 14th and 15th 2017, 18 staff of the Admission Office and teachers of the Ho Chi Minh City Vocational College of Technology (HVCT) were trained on skills to develop career guidance plans for specific target groups of high schools.

Nowadays, the Vietnamese society in general, as well as parents, teachers and students in particular, are still not aware of actual changes in vocational training, such as new career opportunities and career development paths after completing vocational training as well as social human resource needs in the near future. Generally, parents and teachers want their children to go to university after finishing high school because the university degree is “more honourable”. Therefore, it could be said that the recent training on developing enrollment plans oriented to specific target groups at HVCT is an innovative approach to increase enrollment in TVET institutes, with the ultimate goal of professionalizing vocational training and career guidance; thereby enhancing its effectiveness, contributing to change the perception of teachers, parents and secondary as well as high school students about vocational training and career paths after completing vocational training.

Applying active participatory training methods and the International Labour Organisation (ILO)-based guidelines and instruments, the training course did attract the attention and active participation of all participants. Thanks to the training, the participants were equipped with the planning skills, how to prepare and implement a comprehensive career guidance plan that includes a variety of activities, as well as evaluation skills for the activity effectiveness upon its completion.

At the end of the two-day training course, under the guidance of the expert (the trainer), the participants successfully developed their own master plan of career guidance for the three target groups including parents, students and teachers for the upcoming school year 2017-2018, as well as finalized a detail concept with instruments for career guidance activities throughout the school year. In addition, the participants also contributed ideas for developing promotional content on the college’s Facebook Fanpage as well as ideas to improve gift sets and communication materials (brochures, notebooks, etc.). which were specified for the three target groups mentioned above.

Following the first phase, the second phase of the training will be held from September 30^th to October 1^st, 2017. During this second phase, with the close support and guidance of the expert and GIZ FA3’s project team, participants will actively apply the knowledge and skills learnt in phase 1 to directly prepare, conduct and evaluate an information session for high school teachers when they visit HVCT in early October 2017.

The Programme Reform of TVET in Viet Nam is implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.