Tuesday, March 02, 2021, 07:32 (GMT+7)
The Engineer Officer School improves the quality of education and training

The Engineer Officer School (aka Ngo Quyen University) is assigned to train battalion-level engineer officers with bachelor’s degree, brigade-level staff and command engineer officers for the entire Military, and military cadres from Laos and Cambodia. Besides, it is tasked with providing defence and security education for students from universities in the South and performing several other missions.

Being fully aware of the assigned task, in recent years, the School’s Party Committee and Board have comprehensively adopted various breakthrough measures for “a fundamental reform and a solid positive change in the quality and effectiveness of education, training, and scientific research” to meet the requirements set by the building of the engineer force and the military build-up in the new situation, thereby obtaining significant results. It should be noted that the School’s education and training work has been renewed comprehensively in terms of leadership, direction, management, operation, programme, and teaching-learning method. The training quality has been considerably raised. Reviewing the Strategy for the development of education and training across the Military in the period of 2011-2020, the School has well fulfilled the preset targets while many of its missions have been excellently performed. Recently, the rate of graduates with merit or distinction has always been above 80%. Graduates from the School have always shown their political zeal and professional competence and they have been able to quickly approach their task and act as the core force in the Military’s engineering field.

To achieve such impressive results, first of all, the School’s Party Committee and Board as well as party committees and commands of offices, faculties, and cadet management units have closely, uniformly exercised their leadership and direction over education and training and well carried out the work of education to raise their staff members’ awareness and responsibility towards this task. The School has grasped higher echelons’ resolutions and directives, particularly the 11th Party Central Committee’s Resolution 29-NQ/TW, the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 86-NQ/ĐUQSTW, dated March 19th, 2007, and the Strategy for the development of education and training across the Military designed by the Ministry of National Defence. Based on those documents, the School has strengthened all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction over the training task, introduced its task to staff members, and built up teachers and learners’ incentive. In order that the work of propagation and education would be in the right direction, the School Board has directed offices, faculties, and units to adhere to the Project on “renewing political education at military units in the new period,” drastically renew the contents, forms and methods of propagation and education, and closely combine this work with discipline management. Focuses of propagation and education have been placed on making cadres, instructors, cadets, and employees clearly understand the importance and necessity of improving the training quality, the training goals and targets for each major, and the tasks of the School and the Engineer Force in the new situation. Moreover, the School has concentrated on developing special resolutions and action plans, renewing training steps, seriously implementing the policy on “substantive teaching, substantive learning, and substantive evaluation of learners’ ability,” and enhancing the building of a military pedagogic cultural, democratic, standard, and disciplined environment and bright, green, clean, scenic barracks as the basis for well performing the task of education and training.

A ceremony to present graduation thesis

Cadres and instructors play a decisive role in improving the quality of education and training. Being fully aware of this fact, the School has consolidated and standardised a contingent of instructors and managerial cadres both qualitatively and quantitatively to meet the requirements set by education and training in both long and medium terms. Grasping the Project on “consolidating and developing a pool of instructors and educational managers in the period of 2017-2020, with orientation towards the following years,” the School has proactively formulated the system of regulations, plans, and standards in accordance with its characteristics, education, and training. On a yearly basis, the School Board directs competent offices to review and consolidate a contingent of instructors and managerial cadres so as to ensure the development and stability in line with the guidelines on force adjustment and rearrangement by the Ministry of National Defence and the Engineer Corps. Grounded on the planning work, due regard has been paid to improving the comprehensive knowledge of instructors and managerial cadres to satisfy the requirements set by the building of a smart, modern school. Significance has been attached to standardising instructors and managerial cadres’ professional knowledge, scientific title, teaching method, and level of foreign languages and informatics under the regulations of the Ministry of National Defence. Besides, the School has dispatched its cadres and instructors to hold positions at units across the Military so that they would enhance their knowledge and hands-on experience to meet their task requirements. At the same time, the School has designed and implemented many preferential treatment policies to encourage its cadres and instructors’ self-study. At present, all instructors and managerial cadres of the School are holding bachelor’s degree or postgraduate degree. The School has 1 associate professor, 19 doctors, and 162 masters. They are high-quality human resources greatly contributing to raising the quality of education and training.

Moreover, the School has implemented a breakthrough in renewing the training contents and programmes as the basis for a comprehensive reform in its education and training. Over the years, the School has proactively reviewed, “standardised,” and “modernised” its training contents and programmes, resolutely removed the overlapping contents, reduced the duration for theory, increased the duration for practice, maintained a balance between groups of subjects, and ensured a connection between educational levels. It is worth noting that the School has focused on including new information about military-defence policies, tasks, technologies, and arts as well as the Engineer Force’s performance of missions in lectures, while proactively conducting surveys on the quality of graduates from the School at units across the Military as the basis for supplementing and adjusting its training contents and programmes.

Also, the School has placed emphasis on drastically renewing and making teaching and learning method relevant to the training programmes and each group of learners. In this regard, great value has been attached to flexibly employing teaching forms and methods, especially for specialised subjects, sharing combat experiences, improving cadets’ working and living skills, and combining official training with extra-curricular training. The School has required its instructors to effectively apply the learner-centred approach, eliminate one-way teaching method, develop learners’ critical thinking, and increase discussions and debates to transform the training process into a self-training one. Additionally, the School has taken advantage of modern teaching equipment to achieve a huge positive change in the quality of education and training. It has also actively renewed and improved the quality of staff and planning work, with a focus placed on developing, managing and operating the training plans and programmes for each semester, quarter and month. As a result, in spite of a large number of groups of learners and majors, the School has organised the training work in a focalised, synchronous, close, and uniform manner. It has provided training courses for all groups of learners under the plans on a yearly basis. Besides, the School has enhanced investigation and inspection of education and training at all levels, promote the role of the Commission Of Educational Testing and Quality Assurance in organising examinations, and conducted reviews to draw lessons, correctly assess the training results, point out weaknesses and causes, and propose remedial measures in order to raise the quality of education and training.

In addition to things mentioned above, the School has concentrated on upgrading and modernising facilities and training equipment to renew and develop education and training. Over the years, the School has proactively collaborated with competent offices of the Engineer Corps in mobilising resources to upgrade and modernise facilities and training equipment. In this regard, priority has been given to standardising the system of textbooks and documents in tandem with the development of each speciality, modernising class halls, laboratories, libraries, training grounds, and training equipment, and employing simulation software. Currently, the School has 27 specialised class halls, 5 teaching method halls, 8 laboratories, and 1 training operation centre together with a system of training grounds capable of meeting the requirements set by training as the basis for instructors, cadres and cadets’ teaching, learning, and scientific research. Bringing into play such good results, in the foreseeable future, the School will accelerate the building of “a smart school capable of approaching the 4th industrial revolution” properly, with greater importance attached to building information technology resources and applying scientific and technological advances to improving the quality of education and training.

The Engineer Officer School has been effectively implementing the above-mentioned measures to make contributions to raising the quality of education and satisfying the requirements set by the training of military engineers in the new period.

Sr. Col. TRINH THANH SON, Commandant of the Engineer Officer School

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