National-scale movement needed to encourage learning in society: official

Hanoi (VNA) – As the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is strongly affecting all socio-economic aspects, requiring each people to improve their all-round capacity, it is necessary to launch a national-scale emulation movement on promoting education and building a learning society, an official has said.

Prof. and Dr. Nguyen Thi Doan, former Vice President of Vietnam and Chairwoman of the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education (VAPE), has pointed out that the country is still facing many difficulties in meeting requirements of Industry 4.0 as natural resources are becoming exhausted, the population aging fast, and foreign official development assistance declining.

The most valuable asset now is human, she noted, adding that over the past years, the Party and State have taken numerous measures for improving people’s intelligence, specialised capacity, and comprehensive skills.

As of 2020, the Human Development Index of Vietnam grew by over 48 percent to rank 117 of the 189 listed countries. With the workforce accounting for 58 percent of the population, the Human Capital Index of Vietnam was among the highest in the East Asia - Pacific region.

However, the quality of human resources is still low compared to that in other countries while in Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s labour productivity is only higher than Cambodia’s and equivalent to just 7.6 percent of Singapore’s.

Doan said the development of a country must be based on knowledge, which can only be acquired through learning – learning at school and self-learning.

For the past more than 20 years, VAPE has been working hard to boost education and talent promotion as well as the building of a learning society, but these activities have yet to become a nationwide movement. Besides, the implementation of a project on building a learning society under the Prime Minister’s decisions still fell short of expectations, according to the VAPE leader.

Vietnam is lacking a spiritual catalyst for learning in the entire population, she said, taking the “Whole country join efforts to build new-style countryside” as an example which has gathered common efforts by all people and gradually given a facelift to rural areas.

She held that to have a self-learning movement, authorities from the Government to provincial-level People’s Committees need to take consistent actions in order to obtain the best possible results./.