Under the agreement of the Ministry, according to the 12554/QHQT document on 13 November, 2001, form 15 December, 2001 the EMTC 2 has cooperated to the Flemish Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance Association on doing the “School management in southern part of Vietnam” project (abbriviating is the project) with the Ministry’s permission.

I- THE PROJECT’S ACTIVITIES

1- Improving the competence for the EMCT 2’s staff

1.1- The project team and the Collge’s staff have activily joined in training workshops (abbriviating is the workshop), to input new knowledge and skills. So far, there are more than 90% lecturers of the College using Active Teaching and Learning methods ((ATL) in their teaching. This contributes in the College development.

1.2- English class is taught by the VVOB project’s coordinator in 30 months:  2 sessions per a week, consisting of project members and other the College’s officers.   Because of having direct learning with a foreigner, most of learners have a clear and fast progress. And also because of learners’s busying in lecturing and working, this course is not taken place regularly.  

1.3- There were 10 project’s members of the College joining in the study tour in Begium Kingdom on Education and Educational management. Consist of:

1.3.1- 8 project’s members of the College joining in the study tour in Begium Kingdom on Education and Educational management in 3 periods, each periods consists of 3 members and took place in 2 weeks donated by VVOB:

Period 1: there were 03 members, from 13 April to 28 April, 2002.

Period 2: there were 03 members, from 31 August to 18 September, 2003.

Period 3: there were 02 members, from 17 April to 1 May, 2004.

1.3.2- 01 participant joining in a Comenius Course on educational counseling at the SPA-Belgium (3 days from 9 to 11May, 2004). VVOB donated food and workshop fee, but flight ticket and other fee was paid by the College.

1.3.3- 01 member receiving a scholarship from the BTC (Belgian Techniccal Cooperation) to study in Leuven University to get a Master degree from November, 2003 to August, 2004.

2- Organizing training workshops at the College

Workshops are devidied into 2 directions:

2.1- Workshops on the educational management direction consist of:

(1) Workshop on “Doing educational innovation” in 5 days from day 1 to day 5 April, 2002, is presented by an educationa expert - Laurent Osaer – Belgium Kingdom, there were 38 participants. This workshop focused on introducing on how to innovate a school: Innovation on curriculum, on content in the technology and science context; the democracy in schools, the evaluation way in schools, innovation on professtional knowledge training/retraining for teachers aiming at improving the schools’ educational quality.

(2) Workshop on “Inspection and educational quality ensurance” is presented by Mr.  Hugo Staes in 3 times visitting the project. Each workshop consists of teachers of the College. Total are 30 participants for 3 times.

(3) Workshop on “Quality management in school” in 5 days from 28 October to 01 November, 2002 is presented by Mr. Rudi Schollaert, there are 55 participants dự. The workshop focused on the staff development being considered as a first key factor to ensure the quality.

(4) Workshop on “Lãnh đạo, truyền thông và giải quyết vấn đề” in 6 days from 3 to 8 March, 2003 is presented by Ms. Rita Duchene and Mr. Leo Jaspers, thare are 26 participants. The workshop focused on the College’s problems such as a learning organization, school culture, leading task, communication, making an effective decision . . .

(5) Workshop on “Self-evaluation in school” in 4 days from 25 November to 28 November, 2003 is presented by Prof. Peter Van Petegem, there are 46 participants. The workshop focused on helping participants have basic knowledge on the theory of self-evaluation in school, on helping principals know how to do the evaluation and how to encourage and motivate its staff in doing the evaluation.

(6) Workshop on “Educational counseling” in 4 days from 1 to 4 March, 2004 is presented by Ms. Rita Duchene and Mr. Dirk Coenjaerts for the EMTC 2’ staff, there are 24 participants. The workshop focused on helping participants know how to do counseling: applying counseling skills, especially are feedbacks skills, steps of doing a counseling, and other counseling techniques/methods. It is because of the Collge just establishing counseling on January, 2004, thus this workshop is opened to meet the new demand of the College.

(7) Training on “Data” processing on school’s culture” and “Counseling methods on improving school’s culture”  for 10 teachers of the Collge in 2 days is presented by Ms. Rita Duchene and Mr. Koen Pelleriaux – the Antwerp University on 1 and 2 November, 2004.

2.2- Workshops on on the teaching direction consist of:

(1) Workshop on “Learning motivation and effective learning methods” in 2 days on 18 and 19 Febbruary, 2002, is presented by Ms. Nelly Tondeur and Ms. Simone G. – educational experts of the Belgium Kingdom. There are 41 participants. The workshop focused on helping participants have a clear understanding of concepts, factors influencing on student’s learning motivation and on teacher’s working motivation. Participants are joined in active ways of learning, increased confidents and can apply in the teaching practice.

(2) Workshop on “Active teaching and learning” is presented by Ms. Nelly Tondeur, Gert Janssens, Simone G. in 2 periods:

First period is from 21 to 23/8/2002 for managers and teachers of the lower secondary schools, there are 41 participants.

Second period is from 26 to 28/8/2002 for managers and teachers of the Primary, there are 30 participants.

Through the workshps, participants can undersatnd and apply Active teaching and learning methods in their teaching, and transfer the knowledge to their Colleagues.

(3) Workshop on “Making student-centered lesson plans” is presented by an Australian expert - Daragh Halpin (invited by the VVOB) in 3 days from 22 to 24/10/2003 for managers and teachers of the secondary schools, there are 65 participants. Through the workshps, participants can compile their student-centered lesson plans, can use these plans in teaching practice and can transfer the knowledge to their Colleagues.

(4) Workshop on “Self-learning methods” is presented by a Belgian expert -  Dirk Coenjaerts - on 25-26/3/2004, ther are 77 managers and teachers of the secondary schools and of the Teacher Training Colleges. The workshop focused on helping participants mastering on self-learning concepts, learning styles, relationship between teaching styles and learning styles, self-learning methods and applying these methods in developing life-long learning.

Among 11 workshops at the College, there are 480 participants. Among that, there are 327 times/participants from the provincial/district office of the education and training and from the schools of 31 provinces in the south and 153 times/participants from the EMTC 2 joining in the workshop. Most participants evaluate these workshops very good.

* NOTE: Workshop on “Distance learning” is transferred to next project because of the expert’s problems.

3- Doing in 3 provinces: Tây Ninh, Tiền Giang, Bình Dương

The project did the following activities in provinces:

3.1- Training and guiding following groups applying ATL methods for:

+ Core officers and teachers of the LSS in Tây Ninh town and all of the teachers of the Chu Văn An LSS in Tây Ninh town.

+ Core officers and teachers of the LSS in Dĩ An District - Bình Dương province and all of the teachers of the Võ Trường Toản LSS in Dĩ An District.

+ Core officers and teachers of the My Tho City primary school – Tien Giang and all of the teachers of the Thủ Khoa Huân primary school in My Tho City.

Training in each province is done according to a plan unified between the project and the provincial/district office of the education and training with the following procedure:

Step 1a (2 days): Doing training on ATL methods for all core officers of pilot schools, except one school selected for having well-training, other schools have to do under the guidance of the district office of the education and training.

Step 1b (2 days): Doing training for all of the teachers in one pilot school of the EMTC 2 with the same procedure as in 1a. The school will deploy using these ATL methods in teaching during 3 months. Step 2 and 3 are only applied for pilot schools.

Step 2 (1 day): According to the plan, after the first training time about 6-8 weeks, the project team will have observation at all grades and all subjects of pilot schools (total is 10 periods). After the observation, observers (consisting of project team, subject heads or professional vice-principals) will have some discussions and draw out some experience with the teachers. In the end of a day, these project team, subject heads or professional vice-principals will have a meeting together to draw out experience and to find solutions for the process of using ATL in teaching.

Step 3 (1 day): Micro-teaching, doing observation, closing evaluation in the whole school.

Results: In term of the quantity, there were 448 teachers and officers of 3 provinces trained on ATL. Among thas number, most of the teachers of 3 pilot schools have joined in the training and applied ATL in their teaching under the guidance of the project from the beginning to the last day of the period. The following data only consists of participants attending in 2 training days: 

(This do not mention officers joining in the Closing ceremony.For example, 22March, 2003 there were 95 representative of  9 LSSs in the nearby areas coming to this Ceremony in Tay Ninh).

In terms of the quality, participants and teachers as well as Officers of the provincial offices and of the district offices of education and training have evaluated at a high level on these active teaching and learning methods. When the project closed, most of the teachers of these pilot schools have basic skills in applying these methods in their teaching. In order to have this positive result, thanks for 2 training days given by the project’ memners doing in the right way in transfering the knowledge; in other words, 2 training days were also done in the active teaching and learning methods. Therefore, participants master not only knowledge but also practice skills Moreover, problems in the process of applying these methods in teaching practice are also solved in step 2 and 3.

3.2- Workshop on School self-evaluation methods at 3 provinces: Tay Ninh, Tien Giang and Binh Duong, each province is one day. Participnats are representatives of the 3 provincial offices of education and training, of the 6 district offices of education and training and 18 pilot schools. Total participants are 96 ones. The evaluated result is useful methods and easy to use.

3.3- Doing counselling on Improving school culture for the 13 pilot schools of the EMTC 2 in Tay Ninh, Tien Giang and Binh Duong.

+ The College has collected the data of 12 schools by the FOCUS questionaire adjusted according to the Vietnam schools.

+ Project team does counselling for 6 schools among above-mentioned 12 schools; other 7 schools will be counselled in the following time.

4- Contributing on the educational inspectors traing/retraining: From the school year 2003-2004, educational experts being the project’s coodinators working at the EMTC 2 have reports on the Educational inspection and quality assurance in  Flemish – Belgium Kingdom at the the 3-weeks Educational Inspectors Traing/Retraining Courses (Primary, LS, HS) of the College.  This is considered as a good chance to get knowledge on educational inspection system in a developing country and can compare it to Vietnam’s educational inspection system. Total is more than one year with 7 courses having 956 Inspectors listened this report. It consists:

+ Inspectors at HSS (10-2003): 39 students;

+ Inspectors at Primary school (11-2003): 220 students;

+ Inspectors at LSS (2-2004): 194 students;

+ Inspectors at Primary school (3-2004): 132 students;

+ Inspectors at HSS (10-2004): 64 students;

+ Inspectors at LSS (11-2004): 157 students.

+ Inspectors at Primary school (12 -2004): 150 students.

5- Equipments, buying and translating professtional documents:

5.1- Equipments for the project’s activities and for the College:

3 Multimedia Projectors;                                        Scanner;

2 Laptop Computers;                                             2 Photocopy machines;

2 Desktop Computers;                                           Television and Video Recorder;

2 Laser Printers;                                                   Digital Camera;

2 CD Cassette Players;                                         v.v.

5.2- VVOB has provided a lot of English and Vietnamese books on education and educational management for:

+ The College’s library.

+ Project’s members

+ Each Participant is delivered one set of workshop’s document.

These documents are selected and bought by the project’s memebers or provided by the workshop’s expert.

5.3- On December, 2004, the project provide all pilot secondary schools of the College about 26 OHPs (Overhead) and other teaching tools such as pictures sold at the school equipment company meeting their demands. Total budget for equipment is 5000 EURO (more than 6000 USD).

II- EVALUATING THE PROJECT’S RESULT

1- Through question papers answered by the workshop’s participants, through asking questions and having some discussion to officers, teachers, obtained results are very good and useful.

2- The EMTC 2 evaluated: The project reached objectives at a good level.

3- VVOB office has a high evaluation on the project’s result. In the VVOB’s annual conference, the project is allowed to have an example report in 2004.

In a study tour to Vietnam on December, 2003, The Minister of Development Cooperation of the Flemish – Belgium Kingdom - Marc Verwilghen - visitted the College and the project (on 19 Dec, 2003). Through the “School management” project’s result, the Minister is ready to support next activities of  the College and the project  in the following time.

4- Final evaluation on the Project: the Flemish – Belgium Kingdom’s Government rented 2 evaluating expert (one is in Vietnam and one is in Flemish – Belgium Kingdom Prof. Ivan L. G. D’haese belonging to the Ghent Educational Science University) doing in 1 week from 13 to 18 December, 2004. The final evaluation on the project is: “Very good”, “Over the expectation”.