Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam stated at the ceremony for the beginning of the new school year at the College of Technology II in Ho Chi Minh City that soon, the autonomy of selected vocational colleges will be an unavoidable development trend of Vietnamese educational institutions, especially TVET institutes.

The prosperity of the Vietnamese economy is crucial to the development of the country in terms of increased globalization and the associated competition on the world market. Therefore, a highly-qualified workforce, especially skilled workers and technicians trained in those occupations which are demanded by the business sector, play a central role. Against this backdrop, the Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam called on the General Directorate for Vocational Education and Training (GDVT) to communicate with the business sector in a particularly intensive way in order to identify their real needs for trained workforce, its competencies, skills and abilities. For the TVET institutes, the outcome of such needs-analyses will be the essential basis for developing and implementing training programmes tailored to the needs of enterprises. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, this reflects the relevance and the importance of TVET institutes, occupations and skilled workers and technicians for the society.

Furthermore, a close link between the labour market, enterprises and TVET institutes is the key factor for the needed quality breakthrough in technical and vocational education and training. Only in this way skilled graduates can obtain secure employment with a reasonable income. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasised that the TVET institutes need more scope and freedom of action in order to follow this new, challenging but vital path. This is only possible through increased independence (autonomy) of the institutes. The extensive administrative interventions of the higher authorities, such as GDVT/MoLISA, should be drastically reduced to allow more scope for the development of TVET institutes. In this process, the concentration and consolidation of the TVET institutes should be based on their efficiency: TVET institutes with a proven high quality of training should be able to develop further, whereas weak TVET institutes which do not keep pace with the requirements of the economy should no longer operate.