New Zealand has agreed to help Vietnam train personnel for the Human Resource Forecasting Centre and improving English teaching and use in the national educational system.

It has also agreed to provide a management software programme for the Human Resource Forecasting Centre, which has freshly been set up by the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

The agreements were reached during a working session in Hanoi on April 14 between Karen Sewell, New Zealand Deputy Minister of Education and Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister and Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan.

The New Zealand education ministry will share with the Vietnamese counterpart its national standards on students’ knowledge and skills, which serves as an important instrument for educators to develop various sets of textbooks applicable for years.

The two leading educators reached unanimity on the need to hold regular meetings between education ministry officials or to establish a joint working group to share information and facilitate the implementation of the signed agreements and gradually broaden cooperation between training establishments.

They envisioned a student exchange programme between Vietnamese and New Zealand universities in the future.

The education leaders were pleased with recent developments in the two countries’ training and education cooperation, notably New Zealand’s agreement to raise the current 10 postgraduate scholarships to 17 for Vietnam as from 2009 Vietnam, with seven going to English language teachers.

They heard that around 2,000 Vietnamese students are studying in New Zealand, mostly with their own money, thanks to New Zealand’s halving of school fees for Vietnamese postgraduates under its education and training agreement signed with Vietnam in February, 2008.