The announcement was made at a conference held in Hanoi on Tuesday.

To this effect, a training reform program for Vietnam’s entire system of ethnic minority boarding schools through 2020 will be developed.

The country currently has a network of 280 boarding schools enrolling 86,000 students in 49 provinces – a 50 percent increase over the 1997-98 school year.

The schools have been less than successful however, in part because of difficulties in bridging the different languages of students and their socio-economic backgrounds.

Nguyen Thien Nhan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training, affirmed the need to reform the boarding schools’ curriculum, saying that the schools should select appropriate forms of work and vocational training for students in line with the needs of localities.

Nhan also said the combination of general education, career guidance and vocational training would help students make use of their studies at boarding schools.

In this way, they can enter universities, colleges, vocational schools or attend job training courses and then return to their communities to help develop their local economies, he said.

Source: VNA