International Workshop on Early Childhood Education held in Hanoi
12 June 2017
- Ha Noi, 12 June 2017 – The International Workshop on Early Childhood Education will be held in Hanoi during 12-13 June by Viet Nam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in partnership with the World Bank and UNICEF. With the theme "Early Childhood Education - International and South East Asian Trends", the workshop will serve as a forum for information sharing to catch up with global and regional trends in early childhood education, particularly in South East Asia.
Participated to the workshop are 290 participants including academia, researchers, education officers and managers from Singapore, China, Australia, India, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos DPR and Viet Nam as well as senior leaders of the World Bank, UNICEF and World Vision. During the two days of the Workshop, International and Vietnamese participants present their discussion papers on key issues of early childhood education such as policies, education quality assurance, and inter-agency coordination in early childhood care, education and development.
Speaking at the Conference, Minister Phung Xuan Nha emphasizes that ECE plays an important role and lays the first bricks for physical, intellectual, emotional and aesthetic development of children. Fully aware of the important of ECE, the Party and the State pays particular attention to ECE. In recent years, the Government has issued many ECE policies, yet there remains many to be done for ECE in Viet Nam. Minister Nha highly appreciates the support from the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and other NGOs for ECE development in Viet Nam. In particular, the World Bank has supported with the "Enhancing school readiness for pre-school children" project during 2013-2017. He also requested continued support from the World Bank and UNICEF as well as other international organizations for ECE in Viet Nam in the future.
"Investing in ECD is one of the most cost effective investments to ensure Viet Nam's sustainable development. Early interventions for young children help them achieve more success when they reach primary school and it improves their health and over all development. As adults, they will have better employment and higher earnings, better health, and they are less likely to depend on welfare", said Mr. Youssouf Abdel-Jelil, Representative of UNICEF in Viet Nam.
Mr. Ousmane Dionne, Country Director of the World Bank in Viet Nam, highlighted "Viet Nam is strongly committed to education development. Through the universal early childhood education programme for 5-year-old children, Viet Nam has ensured the right to at least one year pre-primary education for children and continue to primary and secondary education. However, we need to be more ambitious and should state that the right to education, just simply by sitting in the classrooms, is not enough. Education should be high quality to ensure that children can really learn."
Key issues and concerns of early childhood education in the world, South East Asian region and Viet Nam have been discussed and analysed at the workshop. This is also a useful channel for policy makers, state management agencies, line government agencies, international organizations, researchers, and education activists to voice up their recommendations in terms of policy and measures for further development of early childhood development and achievements of its targets in the future.
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