The Coast Guard Training Centre under the Vietnam Coast Guard High Command is tasked with carrying out training of elementary-level technical staff and professional fostering for the Coast Guard officers. Over the past years, as the Force’s cadres and technical staff have been trained and transferred from different sources with unequal qualifications, including those who have not been trained and fostered with the Coast Guard professions, they have faced difficulties in performing their functions and duties. That fact poses an urgent requirement for training of technical staff and professional fostering for the Coast Guard cadres. Being aware of the situation, the Centre Party Committee and Board of Directors have implemented several guidelines and solutions for leadership and direction to improve potentials, building a comprehensively strong, standardised and modernised Centre to fulfill its assigned tasks, to contribute to building the “revolutionary, regular, elite, and modern” Coast Guard.

Commandant of the Coast Guard visits the specialised classroom of the Centre

Firstly, to promote the building of the contingent of trainers and educational administrators. The Centre has defined this as a key phase to decide the quality of training and fostering and the development of the Centre in the immediate and long term. Accordingly, the Centre has actively strengthened the organisation and staffing of agencies and faculties and promoted the work of education, ideological motivation, and building of motivation and sense of professional responsibility for trainers and administrators. It has also proactively formulated and strictly followed the process of staff creation, selection, training, and planning. At the same time, the Centre has coordinated with functional agencies to advise the Coast Guard High Command with multiple planning measures for source creation, training, and fostering of cadres and trainers. Importance has been attached to improving the quality of input and reviewing, selecting, and sending staff to bachelor, master, and doctoral training courses and job-based training to develop comprehensive capacity, ensure sufficient quantity, synchronous structure, age, and specialties, and gradually standardise qualifications, titles, foreign languages, pedagogical skills, practical experience for cadres and trainers. To realise that goal, the Centre has promoted the implementation of plans for training, fostering, and practical work trips at grassroots units in combination with encouraging and facilitating cadres and trainers to self-study to improve their qualifications and pedagogical capacity. The Centre has directed to maintain methodological practices at faculties and sections. Annually, the Centre has organised trainer and education administrator contests which have been defined as important “channels” to foster and standardise the contingent of cadres and trainers and promote the movement of “Good training and good studying”. To meet the requirements of education and training renovation to build a modern Coast Guard, the Centre has actively fostered to improves qualifications, especially IT and foreign languages, ​​for staff and trainers. The Centre expects that, by 2025, 100% of its administrators and trainers obtain graduate and post-graduate qualifications, in which postgraduates account for over 45%; by the end of 2021, 50% of its trainers master level-3 or higher English proficiency (under Vietnam’s 6-level English scale), and 100% of its trainers acquire pedagogical certificates as prescribed.

Secondly, to standardise training programs and contents. The Centre’s objects of training mainly include technical staff. Its areas of training contain specialised, marine, legal knowledge relating to the Coast Guard’s duties for unit-level officers. To meet the requirements of tasks, the Centre has carefully studied the practical situation and coordinated with relevant authorities and training institutions in developing training programs and contents to suit the training objects. Over the past time, the Centre has developed and standardised 6-month training programs for elementary-level technical staff and programs for fostering maritime knowledge and legal professions for unit-level officers. The training and fostering contents and programs have been developed to integrate basic and specialised knowledge; foster competencies, capability, methods, and working styles for trainers and combine both theories and practice, with priority being given to practical training. In the coming time, the Centre will continue reviewing, researching, adjusting, and renovating the training and fostering contents and programs towards “basic and intensive” and “streamlined and modernised” to perform well the task of technical staff training and cadre fostering. At the same time, it will research and develop training programs for some new specialties; foster foreign languages ​​for cadres and professional knowledge for scouts of drug-related crime to meet the requirements of building the Coast Guard in the new situation.

Finally, to standardise the system of training materials and facilities in line with the modernisation process of the Coast Guard. This is an important measure that directly decides the quality of training of the Centre, and the relevance of its training contents. Thanks to the attention of the superiors, the Centre has been invested with modern facilities, including four specialised classrooms using simulation models of TT-200 and TT-400 Coast Guard ships to help trainees interact in 3-D virtual space and close-to-reality environment. This is a good condition for trainees to improve their ability to acquire knowledge and practical skills in handling situations and operational activities of sailors during their task performance at sea to contribute to standardising trainees’ action capacity. However, to meet the requirements of development under the motto of “linking the Centre with grassroots units”, the Centre has strengthened the management, exploitation, and effective use of existing facilities and equipment, proactively coordinated with agencies and advised and proposed the superiors to invest in standardising the document system and upgrading and modernizing equipment and facilities for training and fostering. In the immediate future, the Centre plans to promote the improvement of the training models and tools; actively contact and coordinate with agencies in mobilising resources, upgrading its facilities, especially standardising training models and materials and developing simulation softwares; continues digitisation and application of information technology into training towards online training to suit the types of staff training, especially foreign languages and IT, etc. At the same time, it will deploy information technology infrastructure, perfect the “traditional library” and “digital library” for research and training. It will also coordinate with agencies and units to standardise the document system; promote scientific research and practice review to compile documents for training and fostering to suit the Coast Guard’s operations.

Promoting its achievements and experience, the Coast Guard Training Centre continues striving to innovate and improve the quality of training to fulfill the assigned tasks and keep up with other military schools and academies, meeting the requirements of developing the Coast Guard straight to modernity to contribute to firmly managing and protecting the Fatherland's sacred seas and islands.

Sr. Col., PhD. DAM DUC HOAN, Director of the Centre