More radical investment in education

In his presentation, Mr. Jaime Saavedra said that the 4th industrial revolution had started a new race between education and technology, which required from the workforce new skills. The cheaper technology leads to a tremendous change. "Countries that rely on low quality human resources will face many challenges," said Mr. Jaime Saavedra. So, according to Mr. Jaime Saavedra, the mission of education was to do at least two things, including to build skills for learners and to take the advantage of technology.

Citing a sample from Korea, Mr. Jaime Saavedra said that the country built those skills by investing in fundamental education years ago.

"In 1962, South Korea's per capita GDP was just as much as that of the sub-Saharan countries, but Korea quickly advanced thanks to its investment in education," said Mr. Jaime Saavedra.

He stated that Vietnam was a country with fairly developed education and focused on investing in this field. He also appreciated the results of the international student assessment (PISA) that Vietnamese students had achieved. However, the Senior Director reckoned that there was a need of more investment in education in order to develop human resources that could meet the future demand.

Foreign language skills building

One of the notices from the World Bank expert was the need of a high-quality human resources strategy for technical skills, social skills and cognitive skills. In particular, he stressed the importance of equipping learners with self-learning, life-long learning skills. The training of these skills helps students to connect more with reality, have creative thinking and adaptability to change which is developing very quickly in reality.

Mr Jaime Saavedra also said that in order to become a global citizen, it was necessary for one to know foreign languages, especially English. This is considered an essential means for people in different countries and territories to communicate, exchange experiences and learn from one other. He said that even in English-speaking countries, many people still learned other languages for different purposes. He advised Vietnamese students in general and VNU students in particular to improve their English skills as well as to learn as many foreign languages as possible.

The World Bank Senior Director said that the building of an updated human resource development strategy would contribute to Vietnam's success in general and that of VNU in particular in education and training as well as increase the country’s competitiveness and global integration. Believing that learning was never enough, he also reminded students of VNU to take advantage of their opportunity to study in a leading educational environment in Vietnam to gain the knowledge and skills of a global citizen.