Today, Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung visited LILAMA 2 International Technology College in Dong Nai. Together with Dr Truong Anh Dung, Deputy General Director of the General Directorate for Vocational Training (GDVT), he familiarised himself with the high quality training offers at LILAMA 2. The minister took the chance to exchange with the president of the college, Dr Le Van Hien, and the rector, Mr Nguyen Khanh Cuong, as well as with teaching staff and trainees and visited the workshops for Metal Cutting – CNC and Industrial Electronics.

Strengthening the cooperation with the business sector is the main focus of the Vietnamese-German Programme Reform of TVET in Viet Nam. Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH supported LILAMA 2 in developing the occupational standards and the derived training programmes for Industrial Electronics, Mechatronics, Construction Mechanics and Metal Cutting – CNC were developed together with 52 companies and four sector associations. The equivalence of the occupational standards with the corresponding German occupational standards was certified by the Chambers of Skilled Crafts in Potsdam and Erfurt. In the same way, the training programmes, derived from the occupational standards, were attested to be equivalent to their German pendants.

In a next step, LILAMA 2 is being supported by GIZ in building a structured cooperation with the business sector to implement the cooperative training programmes with well-defined practical training phases in the companies and theoretical training phases as well as occupation-related practical training phases in LILAMA 2’s state-of-the-art training workshops. Currently, around 100 of LILAMA 2’s trainees are taking part in cooperative training programmes. Further training of teaching staff and in-company trainers ensures the high quality and practice orientation of the training. Lessons learnt of this pilot initiative are fed back to the system level.

“To implement such cooperation with the business sector successfully”, Dr Hien emphasized, “the autonomy of TVET institutes is indispensable. A good mechanism for implementing the autonomy needs to be found to avoid limiting the flexibility of TVET institutes.”

Impressed with the achievements of LILAMA 2, a pioneer in the Vietnamese TVET system, Minister Dung asks LILAMA 2 to share its experiences with other TVET institutes to support their improvement. Additionally, the lessons learnt regarding cooperation with the business sector and autonomy, two of the success factors of LILAMA 2 mentioned by Dr. Hien, should be shared with the policy level as a valuable input for the development of the TVET Strategy until 2020 in order to improve the quality of the country’s workforce by taking into account the demands of the future employers.