BBM should visit Vietnam

Since he loves to travel anyway, the President should visit Vietnam for as long as a week. It will be worth the taxpayer’s hard-earned money for the President to get a feel of how the war-torn country managed to become a favorite of investors. Learning from Vietnam will give our relatively inexperienced and lightly trained President a crash course on how to govern for good results.

With a looming rice crisis, he should bring with him Agri Usec Leo Sebastian, the scientist who helped Vietnam make their rice farms very productive.

Last week, I cited the many reasons why Vietnam became a favorite for investors.

Also last week, a major European apparel brand pulled out its orders from the Philippines and is transferring the orders to Vietnam because Vietnam has a free trade agreement with the European Union.

A local garments industry leader said the diversion of orders from the Philippines is affecting up to 6,000 local workers. This might also result in an annual loss of around $200 million to $300 million in export sales.

This problem of our garment industry is not surprising. We pointed out last Friday that investors are looking for countries that are well-integrated into global supply chains and have access to regional and international markets that offer investors valuable opportunities for trade and expansion.

But we have always been fearful of free trade agreements and foreign competition.

Credit this administration for getting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) ratified by the Senate. RCEP is a free trade agreement (FTA) among the 10 members of the ASEAN and its five FTA partners Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea. It is a start in the right direction. We were the last country to join RCEP.

On another point, investors seek countries that emphasize technology and innovation, as these factors drive competitiveness and open up new opportunities in the global market. But this is a weak point for us. Our educational system is not good enough to produce the technical expertise investors are looking for.

Last week, The Economist raved about Vietnam’s high-quality education, which it called the best in class. The Economist asked: Why are Vietnam’s schools so good? Answer: Vietnam understands the value of education and manages its teachers well.

Also last week, The International Investor had a similar story written by Filipino economist Eric Jurado: Vietnam’s educational miracle: paving the path to prosperity. Jurado wrote: “At the heart of Vietnam’s success story lies a fundamental truth: quality education is the engine that drives a nation’s economic prosperity. By nurturing an educated populace, Vietnam has unlocked a treasure trove of human potential, fostering a skilled and innovative workforce capable of driving the country’s economic growth.”

Vietnamese children, The Economist reports, “go through one of the best schooling systems in the world, a status reflected in outstanding performances in international assessments of reading, math, and science. The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand, but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer. Even in Vietnam itself, student scores do not exhibit the scale of inequality so common elsewhere between the genders and different regions.”

The Economist cited a study showing that in 56 of 87 developing countries the quality of education had deteriorated since the 1960s. Obviously, we are one of those. Vietnam is one of a small minority of countries that have consistently bucked this trend.

“The biggest reason is the caliber of its teachers. Not that they are necessarily better qualified; they are simply more effective at teaching. One study comparing Indian with Vietnamese students attributes much of the difference in scores in mathematical tests to a gulf in teaching quality.

“Vietnam’s teachers do their job well because they are well-managed. They receive frequent training and are given the freedom to make classes more engaging. To tackle regional inequality, those posted to remote areas are paid more. Most important, teacher assessment is based on the performance of their students. Those whose pupils do well are rewarded through prestigious ‘teacher excellence’ titles.”

Maybe the President should bring the Vice President/Secretary of Education with him on any study tour of Vietnam. She has almost zero background on education. She has a lot to learn from a country that is pretty much like ours, except that it has an educational system that is far superior.

Good education is important in economic development, The Economist declares.

“As schools have improved, so has Vietnam’s economy. But growth is testing the education system…

“Firms increasingly want workers with more sophisticated skills, such as team-management, that Vietnamese students are not trained for. Growth has also pulled in migrants to cities, overburdening urban schools. More and more teachers are forsaking education for higher-paying jobs in the private sector. To ensure Vietnam remains best-in-class, the government will have to tackle these trends. As Ho Chi Minh liked to remind people, cultivation requires constant attention.”

It isn’t as if our government had been a total failure in education and in developing students in science and technology. The Philippine Science High School system, with branches in some regions, is a good place to start. More of this kind of high school should be established around the country without sacrificing the high quality of graduates it is known for.

The quality of our teachers has gone down through the years. And DepEd has time and again admitted problems in recruiting good science and math teachers. Too many subjects are being legislated into the curriculum. Overloading our teachers with other responsibilities, including running elections has also taken its toll.

Even if the allocation for education is the largest in the national budget, we are still not spending nearly as much or spending more smartly so future generations will live better lives. The confidential fund of the DepEd Secretary will likely be used for political purposes and/or red tagging. We are still debating what the language of instruction should be. And DepEd’s Sara Duterte is more focused on reviving ROTC than ensuring our youth can read and count.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X (Twitter) @boochanco