Educators from 21 Asian and European nations and six international organisations are gathering in Vietnam’s central coast province of Khanh Hoa to promote lifelong learning.

They are sharing their own views on lifelong learning together with practical experiences to enhance this type of education, which is described as “the lifelong, life-wide, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for both personal and professional reasons”.

Agreeing that major barriers to lifelong learning are found in the economy, politics, the justice system, culture and social-psychology, they underscored that educational organisations, policy-makers and educators of the two continents should boost their ties and cooperation to eradicate such hindrances.

They also looked into an initiative to establish an Asian lifelong learning hub and proposed ideas to promote bilateral and multilateral cooperation to support the participating countries in applying appropriate lifelong learning models.

A representative of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, Dr. Patrick Werquin, said learning can take place anywhere, in a wide range of situations and subjects, and that learning outside the classroom is taking place in a large scale.

Nguyen Cong Hinh, Head of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Continuing Education Department, affirmed that late President Ho Chi Minh emphasised the importance of lifelong learning right after Vietnam gained independence.

The late President used to say “learning is a lifelong task”, “Learning should be at school, in books, from one another and from the people. It is a grave mistake if you do not learn from the people.”

However, the Vietnamese official said that the country is challenged by the fact that a half of 62.7 percent of working-age people have been undergoing training, with 8 percent of them only attending short-term training courses.

He admitted that Vietnam is in short supply of high-quality human resources in management, that grassroots administration officials are lacking in knowledge and in skills needed for State management, and that workers are not proficient in foreign languages and computer skills.

Hinh said the country is set to update educational methods and promote distant education among other moves to enhance lifelong learning in Vietnam in the 2010-2020 period.

The two-day meeting was co-organised by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training and the Danish Ministry of Education./.