It is the fact that the necessary of improving the quality of the police officers are essential for the period of international integration, that help to fulfil the police’s missions of protecting the national security and maintaining social order and safety. On July 22nd 2011, the Prime Minister signed the Decision No. 1229/QĐ-TTg approving the project on: “Overall improvement in education quality and management capacity of police training institutions up to 2020”. The main targets of this project include: Comprehensive renovation the People’s Police Force’s training system with the criteria of scale, quality, and structure; standardize the criteria system of training and quality accreditation; building the education system including academies and training centers according to national standards, accessing to education and training achievements of other countries in the region and the world to meet the requirements of training and fostering human resource to implement well the People’s Police Force’s main tasks.
In pursuant with the government’s policies, the PPA’s priority is now focusing on the status of a key national police training center and one of the most important task is fundamental and comprehensive renovation of education and training methods. The PPA’s Directorate has synchronously, drastically, and focusing led the renovation of education and training management that consists of: thoroughly applying the credit system in the training curriculum; outcome standards to be achieved by the police cadets; associating training courses with practical sessions rather than theory class sitting lectures; renovation of training methods, associating training with scientific research; enhanced and regular monitoring the teaching and learning activities.
According to the Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW of the Central Party Committee on the basic and comprehensive renovation of education and training, and under the guidelines from the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Public Security, PPA has managed to establish education system by multidiscipline to meet the requirements of the People’s Police Force’s in the changing situations and the social requirements. There has been great change since the establishment of the school in 1968 with only 03 specialized courses until now with 17 specialized courses for undergraduate, 07 specialized courses for postgraduate (including a joint master program in justice leadership, which is a collaboration between PPA and the University of Maryland, USA).
In recent years, PPA has made several changes to the education and training program, such as applying the credits system to the curriculum, shortening the training programs duration to 04 years for regular full time course, 4.5 years for past-time courses, and 2.5 years for in-service courses. The renewed education program is considered very effective and to meet the requirements from the reality. It focuses on professional qualification and skill training with combination of both theory and practice.
PPA also promulgate the set of outcome standards including: morality, language, information technology, shooting, driving, martial arts, and leadership skills. It is an important stage in the education reform process of the PPA. Further more, it is considered as the commitment of human resource’s high quality from the Academy to the police force at the central and local level, which is assured by an effective education-management standards of the Academy. The new education method, which is training by credits and the outcome standards requirement has contributed to the important change in the awareness of lecturers, police officers, police cadets as well as other training divisions.
As results, the improving of the Academy’s education and training management is now changing to the direction of fostering the student’s creative thinking and self-learning, which associate theory with practice, and develop their professional skills. To make it possible, the Academy synchronously applies the solutions including: organizing scientific events such as seminars, workshops; improving the infrastructure; developing new projects focusing on renovating the teaching methods; making the renovating of teaching methods as major criteria for making assessment, etc. In the past few years, the Academy has also signed documents of cooperation in education and training with other departments, local polices, which have further helped the practicing tasks of students and lecturers. Moreover, the Academy successfully organized the outreach activities for students with the motto of “3 together” in the community. This movement has been largely improving the image of the People’s Police – truthful, friendly, and professional. It also the practical ethic training period for the Academy’s students and lecturers.
At the same time, PPA has also reinforced the movement of teaching and studying in the campus. PPA is the first training institution among the People’s Police Force’s training institutions that successfully organized the Teaching Contest in English. It affirms the creative educational thinking in the age of intellectual, to meet the requirements of ever-changing and developing society. The renovation of teaching and studying methods, first and foremost satisfies the requirement in the quality and ability of the students, and finally corresponds with the current context, the development of country in the international integration process.
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However, besides the above mentioned achievements, there are several issues that need to be improved in the coming time:
Firstly, the renovation process of some education programs are still delaying, is not keeping up with the changing of the government administrative management in security, the crime prevention in the rapid development of science, technology and international integration, etc.
Secondly, even though the modern teaching methods have been encouraging the student’s creativity and practicing the knowledge and skills, it has not been a comprehensively applying in the system.
Thirdly, the examination, tests and the assessment of the students’ results need to be more accurate and timely manner, concentrating on the evaluation of students’ creative thinking and professional abilities. It is needed to make the knowledge differentiation between education levels.
In analyzing the causes of those shortcomings, we could see several issues, such as, the expanding of educational scale of PPA in the past did not correspond with the investment on the infrastructures, facilities, and the establishing of the teaching staffs. Although some annual investments had been made, however, there were still difficulties in the infrastructures, facilities and financial ability for student’s scientific research and internship, which deeply affected the education and training management of the Academy. It is the fact that there is a lack of researchers and teaching staffs, which could be explained in the transition periods between generations. Even this issue could be solved by newly employed staffs in the recent years, however, it constitutes the fact that many of them still lacked required skills and experiences, and need more time for continuation training.
In current situation, for the objective of keeping up with the Government’s policies and the guidance of the Ministry of Public Security in fundamentally and comprehensively renovation of the police training as well as of the PPA’s status as the key training center in the nation and region, the Academy should focus on these following tasks in the near future:
Firstly, promoting the fully awareness and timely implementation of decisions, resolutions, guidelines and policies of the government and the People’s Police Force on renovating education and training methods, especially that have been stated in the Resolution 8 of the Party Central Committee on “Renovating fundamentally and comprehensively the education and training, to meet the requirement of industrialization and modernization, in the context of socialist-oriented market economy and international integration” and the Resolution 17-NQ/ĐUCA on January 28th 2014 of the Party Committee of People’s Police Force on renovating fundamentally and comprehensively the police education and training, gradually improve the educational quality in each levels and to keep with other prestigious police training institutions in local area and in the world.
On that basis, every department in the Academy must consider to improve the quality of education and training as the major objective in management. Thereby, it helps to create the consentient, proactive and effective approach in carry out the tasks entrusted for each staffs.
Secondly, continuing to establish and improve the educational program, follow the multidisciplinary direction in tertiary and higher education to ensure the effectiveness, also consulting from other advanced educational programs of other prestigious police training institutions in local area and in the world, to meet the requirement for guaranteeing the public security and international integration in the new situation.
Thirdly, establish and complete the system for training of leaders at different levels, which ensures the scientific, practical, requirement-based characteristics of training of leaders at different levels, including strategic level of People’s Police in the current situation, in Vietnam as well as in Laos and Cambodia.
Fourthly, closely collaborating with other universities and functional organizations, setting up and carry out effectively education and training programs aimed at lecturers from other People’s Police institutions in order to provide the force of lecturers which is expected and approved by the Government of Vietnam.
Fifthly, promoting the application of information technology in management and innovate the method of teaching and learning, of which the focus is e-Learning system, together with increasing the activeness of students in learning, researching, with the purpose of accreditation education and smart class development.
Sixthly, increasing the effectiveness of educational accreditation and quality assurance, maintaining the research on students’ study result assessment and testing, in terms of format, extent and method; strengthen the inspection and discipline in examining and educational quality assessment.
Seventhly, closely supervising the research, alternation and completion of output standard at every major and disciplinary, as well as every educational level in a feasible, objective, precise, transparent manner, avoiding learning for the sake of having degree.
References
- The Resolution No. 14/2005/NQ-CP approved by the Government in November 02nd 2005 on renovating fundamentally and comprehensively the Vietnamese graduate-level education and training in the period of 2005-2020.
- The Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW of the Central Party Committee in November 04th 2013 on renovating fundamentally and comprehensively the education and training.
- The Law of Graduate-level Education.
Pol. Maj. Gen. Assoc. Prof. Dr. DANG XUAN KHANG