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Vietnamese education prepares for ASEAN integration

Update 28/12/2015 - 08:23:27 AM (GMT+7)

The ASEAN Economic Community will be officially established at the end of this month. Pursuant to signed agreements, ASEAN member countries will accept each other’s qualifications.

In other words, workers qualified in one country are permitted to work freely in other ASEAN countries. This will benefit Vietnamese laborers and students but also pressure Vietnamese education to reform and improve its training and personnel.

The ASEAN Economic Community will not only boost the free flow of goods, services, and investment, but also allow skilled workers to move freely in the ASEAN market, home to 300 million people of working age.

In the short term, accountants, architects, dentists, doctors, engineers, nurses, porters, and tour guides will be the biggest beneficiaries of the ASEAN mutual recognition agreements.

To maximize this opportunity, Vietnamese workers should be trained in a profession and excel in a foreign language, ideally English.

Nguyen Dang Minh of National University Hanoi, said this is the weak spot of Vietnamese human resources, adding “our young workers have several limitations. One of them is their lack of confidence in fundamental skills like communications and foreign languages.”