“Commissars’ working and living styles have an important effect on troops. A good commissar will be a good example for soldiers to follow. Commissars’ poor task performance will negatively impact on the quality of troops.” Being imbued with Uncle Ho’s teachings, the Political Officer College has always strived for “good teaching and good learning” as the basis for fulfilling its education and training task and raising the quality of battalion-level political cadres across the entire Military.

Cadets practise dealing with a situation relating to the party and political work during a tactical training course

The Political Officer College was founded right after the 1975 Spring Great Victory¹. In nearly 45 years of construction and development, the College’s generations of cadres, instructors, cadets, employees, and soldiers have surmounted numerous difficulties and obtained a lot of brilliant achievements in education and training to deserve to be a centre for battalion-level political cadres’ training and military social science and humanity research. Generations of cadres graduating from the College have always fulfilled their tasks, clearly displayed their qualities, abilities, and scientific working method, and acted as “brothers, sisters and friends” of soldiers. Many of them have occupied key positions within offices and units both inside and outside the Military. The College’s education and training have directly contributed to raising the effectiveness of the party and political work, promoting the leadership role of party committees and organisations, improving commanders’ efficiency, and making the Military politically strong. With its notable achievements, the College has been given 3 Fatherland Protection Orders (Second Class and Third Class), 3 Military Exploit Orders (First Class and Second Class), 1 Second-Class Feat-of-Arms Order, 1 Emulation Flag and many other noble awards by the State and the Government.

Currently, the building of a politically strong Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) imposes more demanding requirements on the College’s education and training. To fulfil the assigned task, the College’s Party Committee and Board have directed offices and units to adopt measures synchronously, with emphasis placed on “good teaching and good learning.” Party committees and organisations have concentrated their leadership on grasping higher echelons’ resolutions, directives and guiding documents, particularly the 11^th Party Central Committee’s Resolution No.8 on “fundamentally, comprehensively renewing education and training to meet the requirements set by industrialisation and modernisation in a socialist-oriented market economy during international integration” and the Prime Minister’s Decision 828/QĐ-TTg, dated May 11^th, 2020 on developing the Action Plan for the Party Central Secretariat’s Conclusion 15-KL/TW, dated May 30^th, 2019 on continuing to execute the 11^th Party Central Committee’s Resolution No.8. At the same time, due attention has been paid to proactively formulating the Plan 2403/KH-SQCT, dated October 22^nd, 2020 on implementing the Prime Minister’s Decision 628/QĐ-TTg, dated May 11^th, 2020. In this Plan, 11 tasks and measures for raising the quality of education and training and building a comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” College have been set out. Besides, many specific projects and solutions have also been launched, such as the Strategy for the College’s education and training development towards 2030, with a vision towards 2050, the Project on developing a contingent of instructors and educational managers in the period of 2020-2030 and beyond, and the Project on autonomy in military university entrance examination to meet the task requirements in the new situation, while the training programmes for cadets from the Lao People’s Army and the Royal Cambodian Army have been effectively carried out. The College’s Party Committee and Board have proactively formulated guidelines and measures for their leadership and direction over each school year, course, and period. They have also clearly defined the training goal and requirements for each group of cadets under the 9^th Politburo’s Resolution 51-NQ/TW, dated July 20^th, 2005 on “continuing to perfect the Party’s leadership mechanism and combine the one-commander regime in with political commissar system within the VPA.”

Faculties and cadet management units have clearly identified the goals and directions for “good teaching and good learning” emulation, fostered the work of propagation and education, and closely combined “good teaching and good learning” emulation with the Determination to Win Emulation Movement. The Political Division and political cadres have given sound advice to all-level party committees and commands, while directly organising and maintaining offices and units’ emulation movements to provide practical lessons for cadets. Due regard has been paid to sufficiently staffing the Emulation Councils from College to grass-roots levels and aligning routine emulation with peak emulation to make a positive change in cadres, instructors, and cadets’ awareness and action for the task of education and training. Offices and units have abided by the College’s education and training Statute, strictly maintained regulations, enhanced measures for detecting and handling violations of law and discipline, actively prevented and combated the degradation in political ideology, ethics and lifestyle as well as the signs of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation,” and built a healthy military pedagogical cultural environment.

Following Uncle Ho’s teachings, the College has synchronously taken measures to build a pool of instructors and educational managers both qualitatively and quantitatively via specific, proper roadmaps and steps to meet the development requirements in both long and short terms. The College has actively renewed mechanisms and policies to develop high-quality human resources. Significance has been attached to improving young cadres and instructors’ comprehensive knowledge, encouraging all-level cadres’ creativity and spirit of daring to think, daring to do, and daring to take responsibility, standardising cadres’ foreign language and information technology knowledge, deploying cadres and instructors to hold positions at units across the VPA, organising knowledge and teaching contests, and ensuring policies for staff members and their families. Moreover, consideration has been given to applying technical initiatives to renewing the teaching method and raising the quality of cadet management. Up to now, all cadres and instructors within the College have held Bachelor’s degree and 70% of them have completed postgraduate courses.

To further improve the training quality, the College has directed its offices to closely cooperate with faculties in drawing up training programmes and plans relevant to each group of cadets in a standard, scientific, modern, practical manner, update new information, shorten the duration for theories, and increase integrated topics. At the same time, importance has been attached to renewing teaching forms, diversifying methods of cadet assessment, enabling instructors to approach new teaching methods, and encouraging cadets’ independence and creativity. Due attention has been paid to developing and executing joint teaching and examination programmes for several subjects to raise the effectiveness and allow instructors to apply various teaching methods.

Furthermore, the College has added great weight to building up its cadets’ self-study. The College has developed study teams and groups so that good cadets would assist the ones with poor study results. Besides, great value has been attached to inspecting and supervising teaching, learning, and examinations, collecting feedback from cadets, effectively implementing the Campaign entitled “Say no to negative practices in examinations and credit-driven disease in education,” and ensuring substantive teaching, learning, and examination. Inspection and assessment of teaching and learning has been renewed together with a lot of methods of testing cadets’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, and thinking. In this regard, greater importance has been attached to combining written tests with computer-based multiple-choice tests and organising multiple-choice, practical, and oral examinations at the same time so as to raise the quality of cadet assessment and ensure objectivity, equality, and accuracy. The system of examination questions and answers have been adjusted, supplemented and completed to evaluate cadets’ ability at all degrees. As a result, the College’s quality of training has been increasingly improved. On a yearly basis, 91.4 % of its cadets achieve merit or distinction in examinations. According to the College’s surveys, cadres who graduated from the Political Officer College all fulfil their assigned task and deserve the presiding role in political affairs at grass-roots level units. 

Bringing into play its tradition of “loyalty, creativity, unity, good teaching and good learning,” the Political Officer College will keep improving the training of battalion-level political cadres to meet the requirements set by the building of a politically strong VPA.

Lt. Gen. TRAN QUANG TRUNG, Commissar of the Political Officer College

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1. The then Minister of National Defence signed the Decision 18-QĐ/BQP, dated January 14^th, 1976 on establishing the Political Officer College.