The British Council continues to collaborate with the Viet Nam Quality Management Agency (VQA), Ministry of Education and Training, to implement phase two of the workplan ‘Enhancing quality assurance and accreditation for Viet Nam higher education (HE) for international integration’, following the success of phase one.
On 13-14 March 2024, in Hanoi, a training programme called ‘Assuring Quality for Higher Education’ was carried out by experts from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), UK, with the participation of nine experts and assessors, and 16 delegates from the Viet Nam Quality Management Agency, Higher Education Institutions of phase one, and centres for educational accreditation. The UK QAA trainers focused on sharing experience and practices that would enhance the capacity of Vietnamese quality assurance and accreditation experts towards developing self-assessment and external assessment guidelines for the Viet Nam higher education sector, based on the toolkits and guidelines from the Quality Assurance Agency in Europe, the UK, and ASEAN countries.
Professor Huynh Van Chuong, Director General, Viet Nam Quality Management Agency, Ministry of Education and Training, delivered the opening remarks at the event: ‘I believe that these training activities are highly connected. The outcomes of phase one are the premise for phase two, with the goal of moving towards a comprehensive and effective approach for quality assurance and accreditation activities in Viet Nam.’
Besides capacity-building activities for the core experts and delegates on 13-14 March, a workshop on 15 March also supported three universities and three centres for educational accreditation that participated in the project pilot to gain sufficient capacity to develop self-assessment reports at the university level (for the three universities to achieve accreditation from QAA, and the three centres for educational accreditation to participate in the QAA’s external assessment team and accreditation activities).
Associate Professor Pham Quoc Khanh, Deputy Director General, Viet Nam Quality Management Agency, Ministry of Education and Training, emphasised in his closing remarks: 'We always acknowledge and appreciate the British Council’s role in promoting activities that enhance educational partnerships between the two countries, focusing on quality assurance and accreditation activities, and look forward to close collaboration in the upcoming period. We also recognise QAA to be a professional UK agency that has extensive experience in international quality assurance and accreditation activities that support and exchange experience with our Vietnamese assessors, which is meaningful in quality assurance and accreditations development in Viet Nam.'
The ‘Enhancing quality assurance and accreditation for Viet Nam higher education (HE) for international integration’ workplan is within the Memorandum of Collaboration (MOC) signed by the British Council Viet Nam and the Ministry of Education and Training in October 2021, and under the British Council’s Going Global Partnerships programme.
