Hanoi (VNA) – For the last few years, Vietnam’s health sector has been gradually adopting the digital transformation platform, but the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a technological revolution in the education sector that might otherwise have taken tens of years to complete.
A class at Thanh Liet primary school in Hanoi’s Thanh Tri district. (Photo: VietnamPlus)
Education is among eight sectors that have been given top priority for digital transformation under the national digital transformation programme by 2025 with vision to 2030. The programme was adopted by the Prime Minister to develop digital economy, digital society, and digital government.
Accordingly, the education sector is responsible for developing e-learning platforms; deploying digital technology in educational management, teaching and learning; digitalising education materials; and building offline and online sharing platforms.
With the moves, all education establishments can organise online classes, while teachers are able to capitalise on digital technology to give homework and check students’ preparation for class.
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the contribution of digital technologies in education, forcing the sector to go digital quickly to adapt to the unprecedented events. As schools across the nation were closed for almost an entire academic year due to lockdowns, teachers and students had to move online for classes.
Impressive results
The education sector has achieved rosy results in digital transformation during the COVID outbreak.
According to the head of the Department of Information Technology under the Ministry of Education and Training, Nguyen Son Hai, a software was developed, helping the ministry manage all school data, in 63 Departments of Education and Training, and 710 Bureaus of Education and Training.
The management software at https://csdl.moet.gov.vn has been put in use in nearly 15,500 kindergartens, nearly 12,700 primary schools, nearly 10,800 secondary schools and more than 2,900 high schools and 638 centres for continuing education, as well as departments and bureaus of education and training.
Around 82,000 accounts have been provided for organisations in the education sector.
The database includes information on schools, classrooms, teachers, students, facility, students’ health, the “computers for students” programme, and COVID-19 vaccination among teachers and students.
Nearly 24 million students and some 1.5 million teachers have been authenticated so far.
With detailed information provided, the education authority has a better insight into various issue in the sector such as shortage of teachers in each locality and COVID-19 vaccination among students.
The ministry also instructed schools to connect their data management software with the ministry’s database via the Application Programming Interface (API). To date, data of more than 25,000 schools have been connected to the sector’s database.
Information of more than 1.5 million teachers and nearly 22 million students were shared on the National Population Database system.
Besides, the sector built an electronic lecture database for all levels of education, helping both teachers and students access the materials easily.
IT applied in education activities
The online learning methodology was proven as the right choice for Vietnam in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Both the teachers and students quickly adapted to the online teaching and learning methodology. This was a good opportunity for the Vietnamese educational sector to speed up its application of the digital technology in both teaching and learning.
However, the sector recorded a stride in the application of information technology (IT) to organise the National High School Graduation Exam in 2022. This was the first time when all contestants carried out the exam’s procedures online.
A teacher attends an online course to improve her teaching quality. (Photo: VietnamPlus) According to the Ministry of Education and Training, 93% of more than 900,000 students registered for the high school graduation exam online. Meanwhile, 617,000 made university enrollment online, with 97% of whom made online payment for admission fees. Some 81% of contestants confirmed university admission online.
With student academic records and personal information updated on the sector’s database system, university admission procedures are easier than ever before.
Thanks to its efforts to promote digitalisation, the Department of Information Technology was honoured as an excellent example of digital transformation at the Vietnam Digital Award 2022./.
