The World Bank has appointed a Hong Kong university as a consultant for Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training on a project aimed at promoting the continuous professional development of the Vietnamese teachers.

The appointment of the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) was announced after a rigorous short-listing and selection process for the Vietnamese education ministry’s Enhancing Teacher Education Program (ETEP), during which the Hong Kong institution stood out among top universities and education consultancies from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

The announcement was made by EdUHK in a statement released Thursday.

The EdUKH team will provide ten-month consultancy services for eight Lead Teacher Training Universities (LTTUs) in Vietnam through a series of face-to-face training workshops and school-based consultancies aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of Vietnam’s teacher and principal education, according to EdUHK.

Professor John Lee conducts a project initiation workshop in Hanoi, which is participated by representatives from the Vietnamese education ministry, World Bank and 8 LTTUs. Photo: EdUHK

Selected by the education ministry, the eight LTTUs span across Vietnam, from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh in the south. These teacher training universities will eventually serve as stewards of Vietnam’s new continuous professional development system.

EdUHK’s role will be to help the World Bank task team and the Vietnamese education ministry expand and finalize performance agreements between the ministry and the LTTUs.  The team will also be tasked with creating a mechanism to track the implementation.

“EdUHK will also build on the LTTUs’ capacity to develop their institutional development strategies and plans to enable them to implement their Performance Agreements efficiently and effectively,” the university said.

The EdUHK project team consists of seven renowned education experts at EdUHK, and is led by professor John Lee Chi-kin, chair professor of curriculum and instruction and vice president (academic) of the university.

Project team members pose for a photo with President Professor Stephen Cheung Yan-leung. Photo: EdUHK

“We are very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute our expertise to a nation-wide project in Southeast Asia,” Professor Stephen Cheung Yan-leung, EdUHK president, said in a statement.

“Building on our track record in the region, I have every confidence that we can have a positive impact on the transformation and enhancement of Vietnam’s teacher education through this knowledge-transfer project.”

Professor Lee, the project team leader said ETEP is a “mutually beneficial project,” in which EdUHK can work with its Vietnamese counterparts and the World Bank team to realize the country’s educational reform goals.