Improving the quality of education and training is the central political task of agencies and units of the whole Army, first of all the Party committees and cadres presiding over functional agencies and units, especially academies and schools. Particularly, in response to the requirements and tasks of building an elite, compact, and strong Army to advance to modernity, this issue becomes even more important and urgent.

Over the past time, military academies and schools (hereinafter referred to as schools) and units and functional agencies in the Army have thoroughly grasped and seriously implemented resolutions, conclusions, and directives... of the Party, the Central Military Commission, the Ministry of Defence on education and training and achieved many good results.  The Military school system is organised in a streamlined manner, in accordance with practice, and integrated with the national education system. Training processes, programs, and contents have been regularly renewed, standardised, modernised, and close to reality. In particular, although training time has been cut down, some subjects still ensure quality. Meanwhile, the contents and training programs also ensure the science, inheritance, and interconnection and have no duplication at all levels. The schools have regularly innovated organisations and teaching methods to promote the positivity, self-discipline, initiative, and creative thinking of learners. The teaching staff have been consolidated to have sufficient number, reasonable structure, and increasingly high quality. Besides, scientific research has been paid with much attention and invested to introduce many arguments and scientific products of high practical value to serve as a basis for advising and proposing to the Party and State in planning guidelines, undertakings, policies, and issues of military strategies, defence, protection of the Fatherland in the new situation, etc.

In the coming time, although peace, cooperation and development are still the main trend, the situations in the world and the region will still see rapid changes, complicated and unpredictable developments. The competition among major countries is increasingly fierce. Moreover, the strong development of science and technology both creates opportunities and challenges for education and training activities. The Army continues to adjust its forces towards compactness, strength, modernity, etc.  That context requires the whole Army in general and units, agencies, and military schools in particular to closely follow the practice and drastically and synchronously deploy solutions to improve the quality of education and training in a comprehensive, substantive way and constantly build high-quality human resources to meet the requirements and tasks in the new situation. Especially, importance should be attached to well implementing the following basic contents and solutions:

Firstly, to continue strengthening the leadership, direction, and organisation of drastic implementation of this important task.  The Party committees and commanders at all levels need to thoroughly grasp the guidelines, undertakings, resolutions, and directives of the Party, the Central Military Commission, and the Ministry of Defence on building the Army and improving the quality of education and training to meet new requirements, particularly the Resolution of the 13^th Party Congress; Resolution No.29-NQ/TW issued on November 4^th, 2013 by the Central Committee (the 11^th Tenure) on fundamentally and comprehensively renovating education and training to meet the requirements of industrialisation and modernisation in the conditions of socialist-oriented market economy and international integration; Resolution of the 11^th Military Party Congress; Conclusion of the Central Military Party Commission, Ministry of Defence, at the Conference on Reviewing Resolution No.86-NQ/ĐUQSTW issued on March 29^th, 2007 by the Central Military Party Committee (now the Central Military Commission) on education and training in the new situation, etc. Thereby, it is to profoundly and comprehensively change the awareness of the Party committees, presiding cadres, and heads of agencies, units, and schools on education and training and unify the view that improving the quality of education and training is a key political task and prerequisite for building the Army in the new situation.  In the immediate future, it is necessary to focus on implementing Resolution No 05-NQ/TW issued on January 17^th, 2022 by the Politburo, Resolution No.230-NQ/QUTW issued on April 2^nd, 2022 by the Central Military Commission, and Plan for implementing Resolution No.230-NQ/QUTW issued by the Ministry of Defence on the organisation of the Army in the 2021 - 2030 period and beyond. The implementation should be closely linked to improving the leadership capacity and fighting power of the Party organisations. Such link should also be place between building clean and strong grassroots party organisations and building comprehensive strongly, "exemplary and typical" agencies and units and between building the Party committees and building the contingent of presiding cadres. It is required to select and arrange staff who are qualified and capable of teaching and educational management. Regarding the military schools, they should be tasked with building research, smart, modern and high-quality university models to become the centres for training, scientific research, and technology transfer at national and regional levels. The building of foreign language and informatics centres with sufficient capacity for fostering and assessment of foreign language and informatics proficiency under national and international standards should have appropriate and drastic roadmaps and steps in the implementation organisation to ensure certainty, close adherence and compliance with the criteria, and avoidance of skipping stages, lowering requirements, etc.

Sr. Lt. Gen Nguyen Tan Cuong and Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Kim Son sign the coordination programme between MoD and MOET in the 2022 - 2025 period

Secondly, to promote comprehensive and synchronous innovation of training processes, programmes, and contents and teaching forms and methods.  To innovate the training process, it is necessary to focus on researching and approaching towards output standards in association with the practice of work and training at all types of units; reasonably shortening the theoretical contents and training time at the schools; and increasing the time for practice, exercises, rehearsals, internships, and visit duty. University-level officer training institutions need to deploy a number of high-quality, intensive, and spearhead majors to meet the requirements of building a modern Army and international integration. To standardise and modernise training programs, agencies need to work closely with schools in building to ensure science, inheritance, integration, practicality, and development. In particular, the implementation of output standards for each training subject should ensure the interconnection with the input standards of the higher training and education levels and the interconnection between training programs of the same level and major groups to meet the requirements of flexible post-training use of staff. Regarding the training contents, it is necessary to ensure the basic, comprehensive, practicality, gradual modernity, systematicity, and regularly updating. Importance should be attached to educating thoughts, political qualities, ethics, and sense of responsibility; improving professional qualifications, foreign languages, informatics, and knowledge of state management, economy, society, and law; and inheriting and promoting the fine traditions of the nation, the Army and units and absorbing the cultural elite of humanity.

It is also required to diversify forms of training and teaching methods, in which, it is necessary to focus on extracurricular activities, internships, and visit duty and promote the application of information technology, simulation, and digital transformation in teaching activities. Using active teaching methods should meet the requirements that, in addition to ensuring science, promoting positivity, self-discipline, initiative, and creative thinking, inspiring, and building learning passion for learners, the schools need to focus on fostering self-study and  self-research capacity and skills of teamwork and working in an international environment and improving the ability to practice, analyse, synthesise, and handle situations in modern combat conditions, respond promptly and quickly, and win in all circumstances. At the same time, attention should be paid to closely combining lecturers, teachers, and manages of the schools with unit leaders and commanders to enhance the transmission of experience, especially the practice of building and fighting of units, application of knowledge and achievements of new technologies, digital transformation... for students, to, thereby, foster practical experience for teachers and educational managers of the schools.

Thirdly, to do a good job in planning, training, and fostering teachers and educational managers to meet the standards, requirements, and tasks.  To well implement this content, the schools not only build and maintain the contingent of teachers and educational manager in sufficient quantity, quality, reasonable structure, and standards in accordance with regulations but also have reserve forces of about 10% of the payroll. In particular, it is required to focus on building leading scientists, teachers with qualifications and practical experience... to serve as the core to improve the quality of this important contingent. During the implementation, it is necessary to well implement the processes and plans for sourcing, selecting, and training at institutions according to regulations; closely combine with on-place training, improvement of the spirit of self-study, cultivation of professional ethics, qualifications, accumulation of deep and wide knowledge... to build the contingent of teachers and educational managers with high political qualities, capacity, and professional skills to meet the training requirements of a modern army. Along with that, units and schools need to have plans to send lecturers and educational managers to rotate, practice, and assume leadership and command positions at units to foster and improve knowledge and practical capacity; strengthen training on professions, pedagogy, management, and soft skills; open or send cadres  to training courses on foreign languages, information technology, digital transformation... to constantly update and improve the qualifications of teachers and educational managers. At the same time, it is necessary to have appropriate recruitment, management and use policies and promptly reward, honour, remunerate, ensure both material and spiritual benefits, create motivation to contribute, and attract leading scientists, teachers, and staff who have qualifications and practical experience in education and training activities.

Fourthly, to focus all resources to modernise training infrastructure, facilities, and equipment.  The schools need to continue coordinating closely with functional agencies and mobilise (both human and material) resources to well implement projects in this field. First of all, it is necessary to build and complete training operation centres and expand and improve the quality of specialised classrooms, libraries, materials, laboratories, experimental, production, and testing facilities,... to create the most favourable conditions for stakeholders to perform well in research, teaching, bringing reasoning to practice, etc.; build training fields and grounds, shooting ranges..., especially technical and tactical training fields, to meet requirements of modern operations and ensure regularity, safety, practical closeness, eligibility, and requirements both in segmental and synthetic training; and continue strongly applying information technology, simulation technology, virtual reality, and digital transformation to education and training activities to create a positive, fast, comprehensive, and effective impact.

Finally, to improve the effectiveness of coordination and cooperation in education, training, and scientific research.  It is important to uphold the responsibility of the units to the schools for education and training, especially in development of training programs, drills, visit duty, internships, and fostering of teachers, educational managers, and cadets. In international cooperation on education and training, it is necessary to comply with the views and guidelines of the Party and State; focus on basic, long-term, and intensive training to synchronise with weapons and equipment of the Army; pay attention to training cooperation with countries with traditional relations and those with strengths in each field to absorb advanced and modern qualifications and technologies and gradually be autonomous in defence production; prioritise the training of personnel for researching, designing, manufacturing, managing, and exploiting new-generation, advanced, and modern weapons and equipment and training of staff commanders, military pilots, and aviation and submarine technicians; and improve the efficiency of coordination of scientific research, international seminars, exchange of experiences, and sharing of models and methods of training, construction, integration, exploitation, educational resources, learning materials... with countries around the world to contribute to improving the quality of training, especially training of spearhead and high-quality human resources for the Army.

In the face of the development of requirements and tasks, the functional agencies, units, and schools need to continuously follow the development of practices and specific characteristics of each training environment and object; continue fundamentally and comprehensively renovating the education and training work and building a compact, strong, intensive, and modern military school system; and create a solid and substantive change in quality and efficiency.  This is the most important factor to continue building a contingent of professional and technical cadres and staff who have enough political courage, quality, and capacity to meet the task of building the Army and protecting the Fatherland in the new situation.

Lieutenant General NGO MINH TIEN, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army