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| Mr. Vu Van Khanh, Principal of Vietnam Customs School |
Could you tell us about achievements from the training work to improve the capacity for customs officers as well as the expanded training to the business community organized by Vietnam Customs School?
Despite the strong influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the school has performed many key tasks assigned by the General Department of Customs. In particular, to continue to comprehensively reform training, from the early days of 2022, the school started implementing the Training Project for the 2021 – 2025 period.
Also, the school has improved training manuals according to the job position framework and specialized training programs; strengthened cooperation in training, especially international training cooperation, creating a stepping-stone to build the Vietnam Customs School to become the Asia-Pacific Regional Customs Training Center (A/P RTC) of the World Customs Organization (WCO).
Further, the school has trained and fostered a contingent of qualified and proactive lecturers, experts and staff who are able to adapt to the new development situation; effectively launched Learning Management Software (LMS) sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); and proposed to upgrade this system to meet online training needs in the near future.
Especially, the school has actively developed orientations and development plans to meet the requirements of financial autonomy in the 2021 – 2025 period, in which the school has been promoting training for the business community nationwide.
Can you tell me more about the innovations in training?
The professional training and retraining work has been reformed, and training programs and contents have been updated in time with new policies and regimes for each stage. The quality of training and retraining has been improved, basically meeting the requirements.
Accordingly, the school has diversified training types such as offline training; practice at departments and agencies; collaboration with departments, agencies inside, outside the sector and foreign organizations to organize training courses. The teaching method is also improved and specialized. Taking learners as the center, practicing, group discussion more than theory, using pictures, clips, and visual aids to illustrate the lesson.
The school organizes about 150 professional training and retraining classes every year for about 17,000 customs officers; reviews and develops curriculum framework and teaching materials for a number of specialized professional classes for customs officers such as customs inspector, main customs inspector, newly recruited officers, specialized English customs course, origin of goods, risk management.
The school regularly cooperates with specialized units of ministries and agencies to develop training manuals and programs and organizes intensive training courses on customs professional measures; customs information collection and processing; investigation work; drug control; fight against smuggling, counterfeit goods and protection of intellectual property rights.
What are the difficulties the school has faced in training?
Despite high results, the school is currently facing many difficulties in training such as the training work has not been updated in time to best meet the urgent requirements of local customs units and businesses. Training and retraining activities for businesses are still basic programs to meet the needs of renewing customs declaration certificates; the intensive and updated programs for businesses, relevant ministries and agencies have not been strengthened and the school has not taken full advantage of its strengths and experience in training and retraining.
In the process of organizing training for the business community, the school has still faced many difficulties when it had to compete with some institutions that have training experience.
In addition, the workload is increasing, but the number of staff is limited, so the school must always be proactive and ready to perform the arising tasks as required.
In particular, facilities and teaching conditions are still difficult and low compared to the general level of the region; training programs and curricula are not consistent; the contingent of permanent lecturers is still insufficient and has not met the training requirements in the new situation.
Could you share training orientations for customs officers as well as businesses in the near future?
The Vietnam School is targeting to build a contingent of Customs officers who have deep professional qualifications and professional working style, master modern technology and equipment.
The Plan on reform, development and modernization of the Customs sector to 2025 states that the development of a contingent of customs officers who have deep professional qualifications, integrity and professional working style, master modern technology and equipment, meet the modern customs management model is an urgent task.
In addition, the plan aims to build modern facilities and training management methods in accordance with the standards of regional training institutions; build a team of lecturers specialized in customs knowledge, and pedagogical skills, and full-time and part-time lecturers who are recognized as WCO lecturers can participate in international teaching.
To implement the solutions proposed by the General Department of Customs, the school has been researching and applying modern training methods and advanced technology to meet the requirements of job positions in professional training for customs officers; linking training and capacity assessment with the arrangement and use of customs officers; continuing to invest in a number of items and facilities for teaching and learning such as hypothetical clearance model, remote online training software, electronic lectures, supporting tools as visual aids for teaching.
Furthermore, the school has implemented solutions to improve the quality of teaching and learning by actively making a training plan in line with the requirements of training for customs officers; reviewed, assessed and updated the content of training and retraining programs to avoid overlapping; eliminating programs, documents, textbooks with sketchy and not up-to-date contents, thereby researching and proposing to build new programs, documents and textbooks in the direction of developing practical situations, reducing theoretical training time, increasing practice time, and equipping students with self-study and learning approaches.
The school has improved and developed a contingent of full-time and part-time lecturers who are capable, qualified, have practical experience, and soft skills in charge of teaching to meet the requirements of development, modernization and international economic integration.
Thank you Sir!