“Privatization doesn’t mean the government eases off on its responsibility and lets the people take care of themselves,” he tells Thanh Nien journalist Vinh Thang.

Excerpts from the interview:

Thanh Nien: The government recently reviewed two years of implementation of Resolution 05 on partial privatization of education, health-care, culture, and sports. What lessons have we learned?

Mr. Nguyen Thien Nhan: First, privatization doesn’t begin from money. It requires professional, skilled, and keen human resources. Without teachers it’s impossible to open more schools. Human training must therefore come first.

And secondly, it’s also impossible to open more schools without land. [Land is public property in Vietnam and investors have to go through a cumbersome and expensive process to obtain the right to use land].

Another thing we’ve learned is that services can survive only when the providers make profits.

Therefore, demand for the services must be high enough and the people’s incomes must be large enough.

In communities with small populations and low incomes, the government must open schools and bear the expenses so that children can go to school.

In big cities, high-income people want their kids to have a better educational environment than what existing state schools can offer.

So, local administrations should encourage high-quality private schools or establish some high-quality state schools.

State educational institutions at every level have failed to meet the people’s aspirations.

The government will, therefore, not denationalize (existing) state schools but continue to improve their quality and open more schools in disadvantaged areas.

Private schools will come up in high-income communities.

One more lesson is that we have not regularly monitored or reviewed the process.

From now on, the prime minister will be briefed on the issue every three months.

The government will draft necessary regulations for (allocating) land and (cutting) taxes for schools, and student loans in the first quarter.

Divesting education has been the policy for two years and since the beginning we have come to under-stand its principles, which gives us confidence to speed up the process.

I believe that the denationalization process will accelerate from now to 2010.

The ministry’s proposal to increase all school fees has been a topic of heated debate recently. Could you elaborate on the plan?

Some newspapers have reported that the ministry proposed tuition hikes. In fact, the ministry has never planned or announced the so-called “school fee raise plan”.

We plan to rationalize the scientific and practical bases for school fees to correct problems in the current school fee structure.

School fees have been decided based on the people’s financial capacity, not on the real cost of education.

For example, high schools cost VND35,000 in urban and rural areas and a mere 15,000 in mountainous areas. Besides, school fees are waived or reduced for poor students.

The real cost of education, meanwhile, is about VND220,000-270,000 per month.

So, people’s payments make up just 3 percent of the cost. The government makes up the balance.

We plan that in the future people will pay as much as they can but the state budget will still cover over 90 percent of the cost.

In extremely disadvantaged areas, the government will even help students financially.

For vocational and undergraduate training, we expect tuitions to cover schools’ regular expenses.

Students will continue to get loans to pay tuitions and other school expenses.

Around half a million students have been loaned about VND2 trillion (US$124.9 million) this school year.

Our plan to reform the financial system will be publicized to collect public opinion. It will be applied from the 2008-2009 school year.

Denationalizing education also means increasing its cost. At the same time, the quality of private education isn’t always guaranteed. Shouldn’t the government oversee the operation of private educational institutions?

When these private institutions receive permission to operate, they get the right to make profits. However, they must obey government regulations.

I think the government has the responsibility to come up with a system that can assess the quality of education and healthcare providers. We have not quite succeeded yet.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education and Training established the Bureau for Assessing the Quality of Education, but that’s still in an experimental stage. We don’t even have a similar entity in healthcare.

We must admit that this partly has to do with the country slowly getting adjusted to the new era of market economy.

What kind of adjustments should our education system make so that university graduates have the skills that companies need?

We’ve seen so many businesses saying they don’t have qualified candidates but at the same time we haven’t seen companies actively recruiting or working with universities in specialized training. Ironically, our students have such a hard time being accepted for internships.

I encourage companies to work with schools and universities so that our curriculums can be more practical.

The government will help bridge the gap between companies and education and training centers.

Evidently, the education and training and finance ministries and State Bank of Vietnam plan to establish a separate committee to coordinate the training needs of banks and finance companies.

In 2008 does the government plan to speed up the process of privatizing education?

By 2010 we’ll try to finish zoning plans for building education centers through 2050.

In January the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment will work with nine provinces in the Red River Delta and 13 in the Mekong Delta to zone land for educational purposes.

Many universities in Hanoi and HCMC will have to move to suburban areas.

They will be allowed to sell their existing lands to fund construction of their new facilities.

We will offer investors in education incentives by not taxing them for the first four years, offering tax breaks for the next five, and, subsequently, imposing (just) 10 percent annual tax.

Those who want to invest in education can either get soft loans or a partial refund of the (loan) interest from the government.


Source: Thanh nien.