A consultation meeting was organised by the Department of Continuing Education, Ministry of Education and Training, in Ho Chi Minh city on 26 November 2018. Previously, a meeting of the kind was held in Hanoi. Both meetings aimed to collect comments for revision and finalisation of the draft Assessment Criteria for Learning Units at Ministerial Organisations, Provincial and District Administrative Organisations, and the equivalent.
The Ho Chi Minh City meeting was attended by representatives from the Department of Continuing Education, Provincial People’s Committees in south Vietnam, Association of Learning Promotion (central and provincial), and SEAMEO Regional Centre for Lifelong Learning.
The set of criteria is an attempt to build a comprehensive overarching group of criteria sets for assessment of different learning entities, including learning families, learning clans, learning communities, … for the development of a learning society in Vietnam.
At the meeting, the criteria were closely reviewed and multiple justifiable opinions were given for the improvement of the draft.
In the end, Mr Phan Dang Hung, Chief of Programming Department, Vietnam Association for Learning Promotion, wrapped up the meeting by addressing major issues raised by the participants and re-emphasised the logical structure of the set of criteria. He added that learning and education is a tool for poverty elimination, thus the need for learning society.
Concluding the meeting, Mr Nguyen Cong Hinh, Director of Department of Continuing Education, commented on the future direction of lifelong learning outcome assessment. He maintained that assessment will develop in ways that it measures what one can do, i.e. capability not what certificates one has so that it will truly tally with the concept of lifelong learning, which encompasses all forms of learning, in Vietnam.
