Welsh college sets sights far and wide to help improve education in Vietnam

Education experts from a college in the south Wales valleys have travelled across the globe to help improve the quality of education in Vietnam and increase the skills and employability of learners in the country.

Coleg y Cymoedd has partnered up with five vocational colleges in Vietnam, to share its expertise on best education practice to boost teaching standards and help resolve some of the key challenges being faced by educators in the country on a daily basis.

The partnerships were formed through the British Council’s ‘Foundation Project Vietnam’ scheme, a collaboration between the British Council, Coleg y Cymoedd and Vietnam’s General Department of Vocational Training designed to enrich learning experiences in both Vietnam and Wales.

The two-year programme has seen four representatives from Coleg y Cymoedd travel to colleges in Hue City, HoChiMinh City and the country’s capital Hanoi. Meeting with their Vietnamese counterparts, including Principals and lecturers, allowed the Welsh experts opportunities to learn about the existing practices and procedures at the colleges, and gain feedback from students.

This information enabled the Coleg y Cymoedd team to identify areas for improvement within each of the partner colleges and create plans to tackle key issues.

Throughout the project, the team worked closely with the Vietnamese representatives, delivering face-to-face training to develop their skills, as well as sharing tips, tools and resources to support them in implementing changes to improve the quality of education provided within their colleges.

The project also saw ten delegates from each of the Vietnamese colleges visit the UK for a week of training at Coleg y Cymoedd’s Nantgarw campus, to take part in job shadowing and lesson observations, as well as learn about new teaching and assessment methods and strategies.

The exchanges allowed the delegation to see first-hand how Coleg y Cymoedd captures learners’ feedback in order to continuously improve the college’s facilities, teaching and learning provisions.

In November 2017, members of Coleg y Cymoedd’s team travelled back to Vietnam to see how the project has benefited the colleges abroad.

Matthew Tucker, Director of Business Services, at Coleg y Cymoedd, said: “This project has been a huge success and we have seen some fantastic improvements to the resources and quality of teaching within all of the colleges we have linked up with. It’s been great to pass on our teaching practices and quality processes, and seeing the differences these have made has been extremely rewarding.

The scheme saw Coleg y Cymoedd partner with five Vietnamese colleges: the Ba Ria Tau Province Vocational College, and the Central Vocational College of Transport No 1 and No 3, as well as the Hanoi Industrial Vocational College, the Vietnam-Korea Vocational College, and the Hanoi Vocational College for Electro Mechanics. 

Mr Tucker continued: “The key aim behind this project was to support the colleges to listen to their learners and improve their provisions based on their feedback, as we do here at Coleg y Cymoedd. Having visited the colleges, we can safely say that the scheme has been effective in doing just that, with each of the institutions having implemented new practices and training strategies that they have learnt from us.”

“It’s been a pleasure to be involved in making a difference to the level of education provided over the other side of the globe.”

Thanks to the success of the programme, the college has received further interest from educators in the area, with Coleg y Cymoedd acquiring new partner, Hue Tourism College located in Hue City, as well as continuing to work with the three Hanoi based colleges.

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